Relative Something

This is just the second day in a row in which I have woken to find myself alone in bed; alone in this house. I am surprised at how different this feels from all the many other times I have been alone when Cyndie traveled the country as a consultant. It may be unfairly early to judge, but I don’t think I gave this plan a deep enough consideration of the nuance of impact on me.

It seemed to me, initially, that other married people have lived apart from each other, so this should be something we could do, too. My early reaction is that we are not as much like other people as that thinking assumed.

Cyndie reports that yesterday she purchased a bed, a couch, chair, some lamps, a rug, bathroom towels, queen sheets, and will meet her landlord today and get keys to her apartment.

I am struggling to figure out what to make of the new void in my life. It is triggering me to further consider the option that many folks indicated to me would be the obvious choice: leave my job here and move to Boston with her. I always figured it was a possible solution for me, but one that I would pursue if her work there showed signs of lasting multiple years, or if we discover we just can’t tolerate the separation. We’ve gone this far in planning our current approach that it doesn’t seem logical to make that decision based on the first weekend she is away from home.

The mixture of feelings that I’m experiencing this weekend are primarily a dramatic notice for me that I didn’t allow myself to think too deeply about what I was in for. Now the race has started, and I am beginning to think about what I need to do to succeed. Am I wearing the right shoes? Did I train properly for this? Do I have the right gear on for this race? It is a good thing that this will be a marathon in which I can make adjustments as we go. But I don’t think the secret is going to be in the external aspects of what, or how, we deal with this, as much as it will be internal, in our hearts and minds, where our souls are connected.

It is my soul that is feeling the immediate impact of this separation, because my head keeps telling me that she is not just traveling for a number of days this time.