Trying to be...
2003-07-24 - 8:34 a.m.
This is the first morning since starting this diary that I didn't wake up with something I needed to write about. Strange, but I'm guessing I'll have more of these days than the ones that I am full of words.
D comes home tonight. Late, but at least he'll be in the bed with me. Then we only have one more super-sonic business trip followed up with me being gone for a week, and then we become normal cohabitating spouses again. Last night on the phone he kept saying "How do people do this? I mean, people who travel for a living?"
I realized that how a relationship is started and formed affects how the relationship works with separations. My former love-o-my-life and I started out at long-distance loves. Not very long distance (1 1/2 hours), but we only saw each other on weekends or later, when he was not on tour, so the phone was present from the get-go. We were great on the phone, and would talk for hours and hours. And letters - man did we write letters.
Aside: For you younger folks, this was way back in the early 90's when people didn't have the internet at home. Well, not too many people that is. In fact, back then I didn't even have it at the office! And cell phones? they were still reserved for doctors and high powered muckity mucks, but had not made the mainstream yet....
I remember when he was in the recording studio, we would communicate by fax! fax! can you imagine? Neither of us ever knew when we would both be near a phone, so we would write to each other and then I would either fax it to his hotel or to the recording studio, he to my office. And I can remember when he was on tour and would call me at the office it was this big deal and all of my coworkers would be like "He's on the phone! Line 2! Line 2!" as we all had these long distance things and knew the anticipation and gratification the phone calls brought.
Anyway, we had a great phone relationship. And a great weekend / vacation / break from tour relationship. The kind where you drop your "real life" for the time you are together, and all that exists is the two of you as a unit. There's no time for opening the mail, or cleaning the bathroom, or talking to your family, or grocery shopping or any of that mundane "so THIS is my life" kind of stuff. Its exciting, full of plans and sex and intensity.
Of course, that fizzles out when reality eventually does break in. In our case, after 2 years of such intensity, and a path that I (and both of our families) believed would bring us down the aisle arm and arm, his career changed and we had to begin to discuss "real life". What we realized was we were great at the long-distance thing, but the "real life", um, no. Not so good.
So after a few weeks of him treating me badly (not horribly, but distanced and unenthused) I broke up with him. It broke my heart, but I told him that if he wasn't in love with me anymore, and he didn't have the balls to break up with me, then I would have to be the one saying goodbye, even though I didn't want to. But this is not a story about T, although I could write about him for days and days.....
But see, a relationship that starts as one often cannot translate well into the other. Not always, but not often....
So D and I started out as in person friends. Yes, we talked on the phone while at work or to make plans, but we were face to face "look at that expression" people. We spend so much time together, doing the important romantic shutting out of the world down to the mundane "fine, I'll do the bathroom if you do the kitchen" stuff. We do each other's laundry enough to know what goes in the dryer and what doesn't, and have eaten enough meals together to know what the other person is going to order. I can tell what he means by looking at his eyes, and can tell he's distracted by the way his temples do that little wiggly thing that shows he concentrating elsewhere. He can tell when I have PMS before I open my mouth based on the puffiness of my face, and I can tell the difference in his sighs.
So its hard when he's away. We talk on the phone, but its not the same as having him here. After about 10 minutes, it almost becomes painful to talk, and we find we need to get off the phone quickly - pull that band-aid off in one fast RIP rather than slowly, pulling bit by bit. We would rather have five 2 minute conversations during the day to say "thinking of you" than spend 2 hours on the phone in the evening. And his emails saying he misses me always make me smile and my tummy go a little squiggly.
I miss him. I'm glad he's coming home.
(and yes, I am this pathetically in love with him after nearly 7 years together)
