Low, Waiting

For the last two weeks I blasted iTunes on random when I showered in morning, barely filled a bag of trash, ran one load in the dishwasher, and became so thoroughly predictable to the dog that she met me in advance at each stop through the house. I watched lots of anime movies and ate meatball subs. I talked to myself in the house and brought the ladder clattering out from the garage so I could climb up on the roof and look at the stars, and while I was up there, I rigged up a wiring system for our perpetually flaccid climbing rose bush. It was nice. It was quiet. It was a series of decisions made without asking. I worry that I could get used to it.

I picked up Pants and two of his buddies at the base airport Sunday night. They came in on a breeze of jet fuel fumes and talked shop for fifteen minutes-- a spray of acronyms and profanity I stopped trying to keep up with ("I busted joker in the tail chase and my wizzo totally flipped the fuck out")-- before a collective sigh silenced them and one asked, "So. How've you been?"

"Busy," I said, "Good." And I was so good, so tired-but-satisfied that I left it at that and let the silence spread in the car until the acronyms picked up again. I worry about this, though, this nothing to say. It's not like nothing happened. I met and talked to a really cool author and pulled off a good event at work, I hung out with three friends, I went to the opening of the new REI, and I started work on my epic essay about my years of globe-trotting teenage ennui. It's just that I couldn't imagine making those things as interesting or important as they were to me to the people in my car, Pants included.

Before he left, Pants and I had a difficult discussion about the need for me to develop a support network outside of him. I felt that in my first month of work and school I had been doing that, but evidently not enough. We talked about the Cave Every Man Must Be Allowed to Retreat To (see Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, an extremely helpful but perhaps too frequently quoted text in our discussions). Yes, yes, the CAVE. Unfortunately, the cave was not where he got to go for the past two weeks-- instead he had to endure the perpetual Spring Break revelries of a decidedly non-cave environment.

I risk treading into marital areas here, and that's not my intention. I just wish that it was possible for me to perhaps share some of the solitude and time for self-reflection that I've had in such abundant quantities. You know, in the spirit of giving. And in turn, I'd love to take over some of that crazy-busy-following-my-dreams time.

I'm nervous, too. January is another approaching deadline for his work, one that gives us a 1 in 3 chance of staying on this coast, and even though I know there's next to nothing he can do to influence that decision, I am feeling less and less inclined to drop everything all over again.

Mostly though, I am worried about the bruised feeling right in the middle of my solar plexus, the one that hasn't really gone away since our discussion two weeks ago. I am awash in hormones and low on blood sugar, sleep, and groceries, so it's probably not the best time for me to pop open the sutures on that one yet, so I will wait.