I Know What I'll Be Doing This Summer
This isn't the first time I've driven home from the airport, knowing I won't be seeing my wife for months; it's the fourth. By now, we've gotten really good at the packing and the financial planning and the chaos and me spending the next several days cleaning up the house. But I would be naive, not to mention stupid, if I believed for one minute that life with her gone would be easier with practice.
What I hadn't anticipated was, even after my psychological and psychiatric and physical therapy has taken hold, leaving me the healthiest and happiest that I have ever been, that it would be harder.
It's only been a few hours, and I'm trying to figure out what to do with myself. I can't call her, and I can't tell her what I thought of the movie I just saw (Green Lantern: Keep your expectations low and try not to think too hard about the motivations of the characters and you'll have a blast), and I can't listen to her snore when I want to go to sleep. I don't know how it happened, but sometime this year, I stopped being lonely (yes, I've been known to feel lonely, even when I'm in a committed, loving relationship; I'm sure there are reasons).
She'll be back in October, and that will be along before I know what happened. I've got plenty to do, and I've got a network of new friends I didn't have before to protect me. But I still feel kind of awful, and autumn can't come soon enough.
We'll see how I feel when I wake up tomorrow and have to deal with the non-English-speaking plumbers and an overdue art commission and the ... *scary music* cerrrrrtain dentist. I don't expect the pain to go away, but I may not think about it for a while. That's something.