My body feels, this week, like it's been run over by un camion, and a damn big one, too. I've had a headache off and on for a couple of days. Yesterday in the morning and again in the evening, I had some digestive upset (I'll spare you the details except to say it wasn't la Gastro again, thank Immodium very much). And I look and feel tired.
The fatigue I can definitely chalk up in large part to the time change, which beats the hell out of me every spring, and also to not sleeping well the past few nights. But the not sleeping, the headache, and the digestive noise are really all stemming from the same source.
Anxiety. Specifically, separation anxiety. Georges is leaving on a business trip tomorrow, to Dakar, and will return on Saturday morning.
You see, I'm spoiled now. Spoiled by getting to be with the man I love every single day. Spoiled by "spooning" and falling asleep in his arms every night, and seeing his loving smile first thing every morning. Spoiled by being able to look across a table or a room and connect our minds with just a glance. Spoiled by being able to connect easily with him through out respective days. And I like being "spoiled" this way. We haven't been together long enough (six months next week!) to where either one of us can see a few days apart as a bit of a "nice break"... and come to think of it, I hope we NEVER become that kind of couple, the ones who are secretly relieved when one partner goes out of town for a few days.
This is our first separation since the long, lonely month of December when we were apart for 24 FRIGGING HORRIBLE days -- a combination of business trip of his and my holiday visit home to New Jersey, which I'd already had booked before meeting Georges. So we spent our first Christmas about as far apart as you can physically get, with an ocean between us. Yeah, yeah, I know -- three days apart isn't so terrible, and intellectually I agree with you. And maybe I'll even sleep better on my own, who knows? After all, I've slept alone more in my life than with someone next to me.
Business trips are a part of life for a lot of people. I have friends whose husbands or boyfriends travel for many days every single month, and somehow they cope and adjust. My sister's husband recently had to start spending two nights a week in a hotel because he had to take a new position with his current employer that requires him to drive about two hours to work EACH WAY, four days a week, and rather than having him exhaust himself with all that driving they agreed that he could do the hotel thing if he wanted (and the company pays for it) -- it was either that or he'd have to risk being out of a job altogether OR being forced to move out of state less than two years after building and moving into their dream home; so after twenty years of marriage where they virtually never had to sleep apart, now sometimes they must. I don't think either one of them enjoys it, but they're dealing with it. This is just the way it goes sometimes with certain jobs or professions; travel goes with the territory.
The travel junkie in me also thinks it's great that Georges gets to go to interesting places like Dakar as part of his work. Who knows, maybe some time there will be opportunities for me to accompany him to some of those interesting places, as it seems likely he may be traveling a bit more in the future (although not excessively, at least - THAT I would not like, and neither would he). So I don't begrudge him the circumstances that are creating the need for more travel, as it's part of some very positive changes for him at his job and I fully support what he's doing because he's happy about the changes.
But I can't help feeling some anxiety about us being apart. I am lucky to have a lot of help around the house between the nanny, cleaning lady, a lovely English-speaking neighbor and Georges' daughter; yet it's a little unnerving for me to be the adult in charge when I haven't mastered the language fully. I'm still hating answering the house phone.
More than that... I am having flashbacks to December and remembering how much it sucked that we couldn't be in the same room together. Three days, this time around, isn't bad, and it surely won't kill us. But we may have occasion in the future to be separated for longer stretches... not because WE want it to be that way, but by necessity, for one reason or another.
So this trip is just touching a lot of emotional nerves for me right now. I just hate it, the being apart. So does he. No amount of web-camming and instant-messaging can compensate for being able to feel the touch of the one you love.
Of course, there is always the coming back TOGETHER to look forward to... wink, wink, nudge, nudge. And don't think we won't take full advantage of it. We're over 45... not DEAD, you know.
