Change

It will be a good story to tell our children someday, or perhaps my niece, Tamara, when she faces her first painful separation from a boyfriend. I will tell her how I cried for a week straight, how much I have always hated change and how hard it is for me to look forward, not back. It will be an interesting story, something more fitting for military couples who make the commitment and then prepare for deployment.

“We got engaged on the last Sunday in September, and a week and two days later, he moved across the country. We knew it was coming – we’d been planning for it since June. The only reason I wasn’t going at the same time was because I wanted a solid year at my job, and my boss was taking a long vacation in January to get married herself. Since it was just the two of us in the office, I felt obligated to stay and not abandon ship before what should be the happiest time of her life.”

Meanwhile, I will be here at my job, pining away for my fiancé, wishing to God that I just didn’t give a shit about professional responsibility, that I could just be a total flake and leave the whole office in the lurch. Wishing that I could be with my fiancé in person for what should be one of the happiest times in our lives instead of waiting wistfully for four months before we can see each other with frequency again. We have spent the last two weeks, ever since I returned from my weeklong trip to Ireland, in near-constant companionship, and oh, it has been so lovely. The urgency of the impending separation coupled with our blissful friendship and recent engagement has made our time together just…flawless. It has been a sweet two weeks, and I think we’ve done well with enjoying the here-and-now.

But the departure date is looming, and I started crying last night, and I know that it’s only the beginning of what is sure to be a very difficult several weeks before we see each other again.

Tristan is leaving tomorrow – or perhaps Wednesday – for a cross-country drive with his brother to San Diego, where he will stay indefinitely. My plan is to move out in the beginning of March, so as to give my boss enough time after she gets back from her honeymoon lest her little workaholic head explode. I would love to say “screw it!” and just leave right now. But there are far too many loose ends to tie up before I can go: My roommate has to find someone to sublet my room, I have to give my employer enough notice that they can begin their extremely long hiring process, I should probably take the GREs again, I should decide whether to apply for grad school straight-out or wait until I’m in San Diego and see if I can get hired at a university (so as to get cheap tuition as a benefit), I should explore job opportunities more thoroughly, I have to go through all of my belongings and try to pare down so that I’m not burdening myself with a pain-in-the-ass move across the country, I have to figure out the best way to get our two cats out west… There’s more. But if I list it, my head will hurt, and you readers will get bored.

There is so much to look forward to. Tristan and I – though we’re at different stages of moving – are on the brink of a huge, exciting change, and we’ll get to explore a new city while also exploring the dynamic of living together and planning a wedding. Here are a few things I can’t wait to do:

Find a new favorite sushi restaurant (and a new favorite Mexican restaurant, and Vietnamese restaurant, and pizza place…)
Explore volunteer opportunities with the many theatres and arts organizations located in Balboa Park
Register for yoga classes and maybe even a classical acting class
Make connections with new friends
Live near the beach, and therefore visit the beach, like, every day
Create a home with Tristan, Jack and Ollie (the cats)
Develop new routines together
Etcetera

But before I can do that, I will spend a good bit of time missing these things:

Dinners at Tristan’s parents’ house
Dinners on the porch at my parents’ house
Looking forward to seeing T at marketing meetings for the theater we work with
Walking down the street for coffee and bagels on Saturday mornings in my little city
Lazily watching DVDs of The Simpsons on weekend mornings at T’s apartment
Idle naps, warm hugs, and seeing T whenever I want
The sound of T climbing the fire escape stairs to my apartment
And, well, lots of other stuff. Little things, big things, annoying things, wonderful things.

A bright side to the long separation: my friends are all ready and willing to distract me. I’ll be visiting Kate in Maryland for a weekend of shopping, drinking, and Friends Scene-It Trivia, I’ll be working with Lydia on a staged reading, I’ll spend a long weekend tasting wine as an honorary member of the D.C. crew and looking through old bridal magazines with Jess, and I’m sure my mom and I will enjoy plenty of mother-daughter shopping and chick-flick-watching time.

In a way, when I can peek around the pain in my heart, I’m looking forward to this separation as a chance for both T and me to grow as individuals before we merge our lives. I do think absence makes the heart grow fonder (which might be why the idea of being apart hurts so goddamn much – my heart is already enormously fond of Tristan, and to make room for more fondness, it just has to ache for a while), and it will be interesting to see how our relationship adjusts to the distance. I’m even, in a frightened sort of way, looking forward to facing head-on my loneliness and anxiety about being alone and seeing if by accepting those emotions, I can control them.

But first, I’ll probably cry a lot. And while Tristan is still here for a day’s more worth of hours, I’m savoring the delight of seeing him whenever I want.