Since Corey’s been gone, I have developed The Insomnia. The causes seem obvious. It’s a story as old as time itself. Husband is deployed to a far off land where you have to carry a weapon everywhere and wife is left home to worry. That same childless wife is stressed shouldering the responsibility of raising two children upon the death of their mother. At least I get a week off. I am in awe of the men and women who do this every day with little or no help, because I need the week off to do the parental things I do not have time to do on my week on and to get ready for the next week I have them. We should be throwing money and resources at single parents to help ease this stress.
I’m down off my soapbox.
Our story, Corey’s and mine, is very tangled and complex. One that started at a young age and was volatile from the beginning. I did not want to start dating him, because he was the best friend I had and I knew he was limited in his relationship abilities. It stimulated me to flee the state to escape our traumatic breakup and the subsequent destructive decisions I was making as a result. My friend Kiyana teased me all that time that every guy I was attracted to resembled him, all those years we were apart. I made some good relationship decisions, non-permanent as they were. His story of what he was doing while we were apart is not mine to tell.
I knew all along that we would meet again, and that we would grow old together. I thought it would be when I was much older. I thought I would find a partner and have a family and through some tragedy or dissolution, we would find our way back together. As the events actually unfolded, people were hurt and lies were told but eventually, I think, we both reconciled what we had done and made amends to those we hurt. We honestly could not help it. It was immediate and consuming, and some of the details are secrets we share with only each other.
The initial reconnection was occasional emails catching up on life, which turned into how we had failed each other when we were younger. There was a line that could not be crossed and we respected that line. There came a time when it was okay for phone calls, and then we decided to meet for lunch. We met at a Chinese restaurant near his office, and when I saw him, it was the first time I had laid eyes on him in six years. Our course was set from that single lunch hour and into the future.
It was like I’d had some kind of transplant, like a part of me that had been broken and caused a lot of suffering for myself and others was removed and replaced with a functioning, healthy, productive organ. He has been a part of me, in love, turmoil and exile, since I was fourteen years old. He was what I looked for in everyone else, the love he could not give me. So having 7,000 miles between us is why I cannot sleep.
I sent him a card about midway through this deployment. It said simply “not having you would be like not having a forehead. I'd still be able to do stuff but I'd definitely feel like I was missing something.”
I’ve written before about the abrupt and paralyzing loneliness that has washed over me at the most inopportune times. It passes and activity resumes, but the heft of those few moments has always left me shaken and unconfident. Now, there’s a trepidation about him coming home for more than a vacation. The changes the boys and I will have to make in our routine to adapt to his return as the head of our household, a post I’ve bitterly managed in his absence. The things that bothered us during his two-week leave will be permanent and require a resolution. The balance of power will shift. We will be sort of strangers to each other, sharing a love and a home and a family and a bed, which maintains a familiarity, but the patterns are so, so different.
Except that we’ve been apart before, not sharing any moments at all, for a long stretch of time. And when we were reunited, we knew to say to each other “this means we will be married.” That concession was effortless. The bond between us is so strong it has the power to reconfigure us to fit to each other, regardless of how long or wide the distance between us.
So now the sleeplessness may be the anticipation of when he’ll leave there and start his 10-day-ish journey home to us. And the moment after a couple days of relishing the joy of being together, when the four of us will look at each other and understand our adjustment period must begin. We’ll all hurt each other’s feelings and he and I will seriously disagree and stay up late to settle the issue. It is all necessary, even the insomnia, as it is a part of this path we unknowingly agreed to follow when we spoke our first words to each other in the band room at Jena High School.
My first step in accepting this loving challenge is to wash all his clothes that have been growing stale in his dirty hamper since he was home in September. This means I will violate our agreement to not do each other’s laundry (he hates the way I fold.) It must be done, because it smells like really old man in there.
Safe travels. Where there are seatbelts, use them to buckle up. I love you.
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