Flight 948

That was the number of my flight home, seat 15A.  I had no seatmate (praise the lawd) and this turned out to be a very good thing--no one wants to sit next to someone who is crying off-and-on for almost ninety minutes.  This was after my airport crying, and after my car-crying, saying good-bye to Mike.
As he vocalized; "Why is it so hard this time?"
A good question.
After all, we're 'used to' good-bye. We're used to 'being apart'.  Not by choice of course,
but by sheer circumstance of our different citizenships, our respective careers, his home, my mortgage, the geography between us, the whole of our lifestyles built up around us.

But it doesn't seem to make the good-byes any easier. They seem to be getting worse.
I return to my cold Toronto home, to my beloved condo, but it's empty when Mike's not here.
I notice how little I want to socialize with anyone.

It's funny. In my twenties and early thirties all I did was work like a dog, I bolted out of the gate, with no inkling that I would burn out fast and that life would intervene and interrupt my quest for career domination.
At the time, I rationalized that since I seemed to have zero control over my romantic life (what little I had) I had to work on controlling the things I could, which for me, meant my career and investing in Toronto real estate, and not waiting for a man's help.
Now, I waffle back and forth between a frenzied city and an easy forest-meets-sea, and I am dumbfounded about how all my planning has brought me to this. This meaning the love of my life (Mike, of course), and our separated lives. How perfect it is when we are together, how we make it work even when we're not in the same place.

It goes like this; work, commute, my mom, my sister, my niece and nephew, my friends, my running, cooking, reading, this blog. It all adds up to a full life, but the missing piece pulls at me.

Earlier in my adult life, I had the missing piece of someone to love me--where WAS this person?
I remember crying to my boss after a disastrous trip with an ex-boyfriend to an all-inclusive vacation resort saying, Why can't I be married? And her sage answer, her calm answer, her wise answer:
"So many marriages end in divorce."

Too true. And I know that my timeline (late bloomer) was my timeline. I had to get all the crazy out of my system, I had to come to this place, the one I am in with Mike, with my whole heart. And I have, even though it sometimes feels like my heart is at the mercy of a map, of a bunch of kilometres (miles), at the hands of immigration officials for whom Mike and I are a number.

I don't want to leave this post in a whiny-state. I know I am enormously lucky. I reflected about that on the plane ride home--the luck of finding Mike again, of how every compass point of fate seemed so determined to lead me to him. And then I would fall apart once more, in tears, as I watched the clouds roll by the plane, the miniature-looking fields and roads, all zooming by, taking me away from him. I had a fresh wave of tears (NOT nostalgia for my city) as the plane raced toward Toronto, the Etobicoke skyline in dusky view, all my thoughts jumbled, wishing for my journal to record the fresh thoughts on the plane (I'm recycling right now--lately, all my best writing is done in my head, before I fall asleep, or when I'm on a plane or in an airport, without paper or blog-space. Where I have to digest it and not let it out).

It's Tuesday night, this is just throwaway-writing practice, and it's just proof that yes, I made it through a busy work day, I cooked a nice dinner for myself, and I'm really just talking aloud, listening to my own thoughts. 

But they wander back to Maine, incessantly.