This is one of those exceedingly anticipatory, stressful times when you get excited about an adventure but are also terrified of the process. I have a lot of thrill inside bubbling up but it keeps getting quashed by the scary parts. The public. Delays. Bomb threats? Issues. Driving. Waiting. Air sickness. Fear of takeoff. Over or underpacking. Worrying about my little dog, off to a new kennel tomorrow where they seem nice but could be monstrous, even though we went to visit and all was well.
Mostly overpacking. I'm the queen of not touching half my stuff on trips. And hating all the clothes I own all the time.
I am excited to get away from this heat and to feel actual rain again. I hope there is some.
I want to see Ben so badly I've bitten my nails to the quick to feel something other than the ache of missing him. But I'm scared of trying to reconnect with Ben in a familiar but unfamiliar landscape. Trying to connect the three of us into some semblance of what we were before. I thought Lochlan and I were headed down a new road, one at the end of which I would invoke all of Ben's paperwork and he would resort to being a warm but mostly absent friend again. We never got there and maybe that's for a reason but I'm glad to be headed to see Ben. It's the halfway point in his absence. It's the defining knife-edge of this relationship, sharpened to a point and ready to draw blood. Maybe things will be familiar and maybe they'll be different. We don't know until we try.
The part I'm having problems with is leaving him again. Weeks are long. He makes me laugh like no one else. His newly-learned affection is solid gold. His sweetness unmatched. There's a glaring absence, a huge Ben-sized hole where I wish he was but when I go he isn't there. When I call him we fight. When he messages me we get our signals crossed and we misinterpret one another and argue just a little more. I don't do well apart from him. Maybe I should take it as a sign and yet when he left I thought the perceived implication of being abandoned again would kill me. It didn't. I juggled Loch and Caleb as best I could and I didn't slip any further down the hole I dug.
I did it? Maybe I did. I did something. I'm getting through it. I'm trying.
I've worked very hard with August and with Sam and even with Joel to do all the right, healthy things to bring myself to a place where I feel comfortable standing up for myself.
Ben always says he isn't here to fix me. He didn't leave to break me and he's not interested in being any sort of human crutch. That he wants to support me in doing it all on my own and that maybe him going away is a catalyst for me doing something constructive for once when it's so very easy spending time with whomever wants to spend time with me. That I am enabled, coddled and cut off at the knees when it comes to constructive efforts to shore up my well-being. That his presence only makes me delay the hard work for the fun.
All I have done is hard work since he's gone. I didn't necessarily keep all my promises but I didn't fling myself off the cliff either.
So maybe he'll be surprised.
