Making the Necessary Adjustments

T.E. is back in his native land.  He’s talking the talk and walking the walk and eating the foods (although given where his native land IS you gotta wonder why he’s doing that last one.)  Although actually right now he’s most likely sleeping the local sleep, after 24 hours worth of travel.  Yes, you heard right – since coming back to Hippyville it now takes, door to door, an entire DAY for him to get home (if you define “takes a day” as “he leaves our home here in Hippyville at 11am and arrives home in England at 11am the next morning.  Which you shouldn’t, because it’s actually more like 16 hours.  But at the same time when you’re the person doing the travelling it probably still FEELS like it took a day.  So yeah, go ahead and define it that way if you want.  I’m sure he does…)  This is because instead of having an airport a short drive away (as we did when we were in the big, fancy city) we’ve got one a very, very long drive away.  Heck, we leave the house four hours before his first plane leave the ground.  Lame.  L-A-M-E.

Meanwhile though I don’t have the epic, awful, forever-and-ever-and-ever travel day that he does I have to come home to a house that I’ve been sharing with him for weeks or months and get used to it all sad and empty.  One thing that is part of his experience, and which I kind of envy, is that he has two lives.  He’s got the life of a young man essentially single and living in England, with his friends and his family and school and martial arts and all the other things in his life there.  And he’s got the life of the young man involved with the older woman living with her in America and with the US friends and family that he got through her. 

For me I have this life that sometimes has him in it, and sometimes doesn’t.  So I keep having to make this adjustment between them each time he arrives, and each time he leaves.  The adjustment is worth it, but still hard.  So here I sit, way too aware of how much room there is on this couch and how little conversation I’ve engaged in today.  By next weekend I’ll be used to this.  But the first few nights are the hardest.