Notes on a Slow-Moving Heartache

What terrifies me right now:
• that he will leave the country and go back to hell when his visa expires in two weeks.
• that, if he gets a job in another part of this country, he won’t ask me to go with him.
• that this break we just started, the break he requested so he could figure out what he wants out of the next step in his life, that this break will last for a long time.
• that I’m going to be left alone by someone I love.
• that someone I love is in pain, is terrified, is so anxious about everything all the time, when really his heart is light, sweet, curious.
• that I don’t know how to help.
• that maybe I can’t help.

Day 1
The morning after my birthday, I told him acting like a victim was not going to fix a single thing. He called me immediately and apologized. Said he hadn’t meant to ignore me on my birthday, but that he hadn’t wanted to ruin the day and hadn’t known what he might say.

It was piercing bright outside. People were walking to work. I was sitting on the foot of my bed, crying into a phone. I heard birds on the other end.

“I’m sorry,” He said over and over and over again. “I have so much to say, but I don’t want to speak incorrectly.”

He would text correctly later. After hearing the word victim, he’d realized the need to make a plan. That it had been hard to see the big picture. That he was going to make staying in the country his top priority. And that he needed time and space to figure out exactly what he wanted, and exactly how to do that.

When he sent all this, it was the middle of the work day. It was too sudden to even feel it like a sucker punch.

“Can we please keep in regular contact?” I asked.

“Yes.”

The sucker punch waited until I got home.

Day 2
We have been silent with each other for over a day. In 3 hours, it will be 2 days.

For a lot of that time, I’ve been asleep. For some of that time, I was meditating. For most of that time, I was pretending to work. When I clocked out I could feel the weight of the situation hang on me. But weights were literally hanging on me at physical therapy for a broken knee, so maybe I was also tired from that.

I have cried so much about him that I am surprised I don’t do it more often now. I don’t know what I feel now. I meditate and everything gets quiet. At work, I think about when I can go home and get quiet again. It’s never quiet at work but you can at least escape into it and get distracted.

What do I do now? Do I date now? Do I stay silent until June and then he deports? Do I wait until he figures out what he’s doing or where he’s going, and then uproot it all and restart in a new part of the country? Am I connected to anything enough for it to matter if I leave? Do I ever stop worrying about him?

Day 3
Overwhelmed.

There is too much work. So, much, work. I could not possibly know where to even start on it. And it keeps coming. Spilling out into my inbox and across my desk, too much to even pretend that I or any other human being could organize it. Just too much.

It’s also beautiful outside. I’m by a window where I can look at sky and trees. I love someone who loves me. The details on how that will evolve, or where it will evolve to, are very much up in the air. We’ll find out in Gemini season.

I have a bruise on my arm because I got shot with a paintball this weekend. It was the first time I’d played paintball or done something so active since breaking my knee. So progress happens even when it feels like it hurts.

Photo by Martino Pietropoli on Unsplash