A sinking heart

He tells me, almost offhandedly, that he has to spend two nights away. For work. Not optional.

My heart slowly, slowly settles into the pit of my stomach. Tears well to my eyes and shine there, unshed. My chest aches, my throat burns, the words of his message float in front of my eyes, too unreal, too terrible. My eye starts to twitch again, and I had thought I was done with that horrible thing.

"You're leaving me again?" is all I can manage to even type.

My stomach has an immediate need to empty itself. I oblige it, then return to the computer. The taste of bile still lingers at the back of my throat, not chased away by the water I've consumed. He asks me questions about my day, clearly unaware of the depths of despair he has plunged me into. I tell him this. He tells me not to cry, that it shouldn't be as long as the last time. I tell him it doesn't matter.

It really is that bad. I hate this job of his. I have encouraged him to this point, and I still will. I know he enjoys the work - but to separate us for multiple nights within a space of months, us who were never apart overnight for eight and a half years no matter the hoops we had to jump through to make it so, to do that.. I hate it. The burgeoning promise of more and more separation does not make a happy camper out of me.

"Well here you are
and you're a hundred thousand miles away, yeah.
They say that absence makes the heart grow fungus."



I wish we'd never come here.