Musings of a Wench

Finally gone...

On Wednesday we found out that the visa has FINALLY been approved and that he would finally be leaving, after a month of delays. Everyone kept asking if I was okay. Everyone. My boss, my friends, my parents, his coworkers, his HR person during his exit interview. Everyone. And I was fine. (Perhaps Grey's Anatomy style fine, but fine none to the less.) I mean, what was the point? When he went to Fort McMurray that first summer we were dating (when he got to come home every second weekend, natch), I was a tad bit of a hysterical mess leading up to it. And it didn't help anything. It didn't help him, it didn't help me and it only made a hard situation harder. So this time I didn't. I just simply took a deep breath, started up a haphazard meditation practice and acted like a grown up. I did what needed to be done, I kept my shit together and started planning on where to go when I get to fly over there to see him. (Some combination of Bahrain, Qatar and Dubai, by the way.) So everything was fine.

I held it together until Friday night, a little bit. I mean, other than the constant endless nightmares we've both been having. Mine have nothing to do with this trip, but are pure anxiety dreams none the less. And even today, other than some random eye leaking, I've managed to pretty much hold it together, for his sake if for nothing else. I'm not the one who has pretty much had to leave everything for a year, to live in a strict Muslim theocracy in the middle of the desert - a life deeply unlike this one we have here in the Canadian foothills. I'm the one who stays. Whose life goes on, fairly normally.

I managed to keep it relatively together until today. And then more than slightly lost it as a watched him go through security. And then lost my shit on the way home. (Hey, it was only Deerfoot...) And then more when I was at home. The depth of my grief came as a slight surprise even to me.

Raised in a good repressed WASP family, naked emotion was both frowned upon, and slightly feared. and this? They body wrenching sobs? I don't even have the vocabulary to speak of how this feels. I am sad. That doesn't even begin to get to what I feel.

This is John. This is the one who I've seen pretty much every day for the last SIX YEARS. This is the one I've lived with for more than 3 and a half years. Of those, there have been TWO NIGHTS where we've not shared a bed. And they were weird. How do I even go about this? This large, empty house? The cold bed? The silence? My personal high level of paranoia? The loneliness? The lack of sex? The sadness? This deep, deep sorrow? Mixed in with just a bit of jealousy? (A pool? A chance at something alien? Working somewhere that's not here? Living someone far away and foreign? That angle is practically a wet dream for me.)

He was going to propose, you know. Before this all happened, he was planning something for this December - our 6 year anniversary and all that. I don't know more than that, but that he was going to. And now? We're spending our 6th year together - apart.

This grief is shocking and raw and loud. I'm shocked, honestly. This much raw emotion is not something I really know how to deal with. I mean, other than with the large gin gimlet I'm drinking, of course. (That WASP thing again.) A couple of friends came to the airport to see John off, and then offered to take me out for an evening of dinner and drinking, and I had to turn them down. It was such a kind offer, but the only way I am able to grieve is alone, and I still have to go to work on Monday and function like a semi there employee, so must at least work thought this violent first phase of grief. I have decided I get to grieve loudly, with the occasional surprise wild keening for this weekend, and then I have to be able to at least function. I've managed to make my life busy - 8.5 hours at work, plus a university night class, the pole dancing class, my Iyengar yoga class. And a gym membership, and friends, and probably many many house parties. Dinners with my parents. TV. Dinners with friends.

This is not the end of the world. This is only for a year, at most. I'll be flying out to see him in two months for a week. And then again in 5 months. And then again at 8 months. And then, if we can swing it, 3-4 weeks in Europe when he's done. (A year of massively more exotic vacations than the one this year in Utah and Idaho!) It's not the end of the world. We live in an age of internet, email, webcams and jet travel. This is neither the end of the world nor then end of us. It's just... it's hard, and will continue to be hard, and I have to figure out how to deal with out slipping too far down, and focusing on the fact that one year is not forever. And, you know, probably drinking a lot to make up for the fact that he can't.

You do not have to be good...

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Labels: solo year, the boy, twisty

posted by Morgan @ 6:56 p.m.