The Two Week Timer

Sam feels so far from me. Beyond the physical sense.

I will sometimes turn to him and say he feels far away when we are side by side. If I notice he is lost in a mental labyrinth made of raw emotions, unpleasant memories, and unfulfilled desires. I ask him where he is. I try to pull him back out of the labyrinth into our real world, with me across the table.

He does the same to me. If I’m in a mood, he knows how to make me laugh. It’s like a helicopter hovers over my mental labyrinth, and he sends down a rescue team to pull me up and out of it. No one has ever been able to do it so deftly as him.

But if either of us are really getting in our heads about something, or we haven’t had sex in a few days, we feel far away from each other, even if I’m sitting on his lap. Being intimate has always brought us back together, physically locking in helps us emotionally lock in as well.

But without that physical tether, the distance feels farther than it actually is.

It feels like I’ll never get him back.

The chord that ties us together, stretched across a continent, gets strained even harder.

So, here, in the early electric spring days, I can’t grasp him. I start to get jealous. Possessive. A feeling I rarely feel in relationships. I don’t like the feeling of not having access to him, which only heightens when people start to visit him.

We have been apart for two weeks and suddenly something shifts. Anything can set the other off. We start arguing over a misspoken word, stressing about the wedding, or being upset that the other didn’t communicate that they were going to be out later than they expected.

Sam and I don’t really fight. We have disagreements. We hear the other one out. We don’t let the feelings sit for long. We bring up an issue immediately. We validate the other person’s feelings, hold their hand while listening, kiss and cuddle make each other laugh at the end of make up.

But with a country between us there is no physical balm to make up and soothe the agitation between us; it’s just a snap of the phone and he is gone again, and I’m left stewing in unpleasant feelings. When we fight at night, the feelings simmer and bake, and I wake up soured and spoiled like meat left out of the fridge overnight.

There is a week in May we fight. And I mean FIGHT. I sit on the edge of our bed, and look out at the lights in the apartments across the street. It’s as dark as it can be in Brooklyn. Sam sits in his car in Phoenix, and I can hear the twilight around him.

I guilted him about something, and he screams at me. He has never yelled at me like that before. I don’t fight back because I know I kind of deserve it. His mom is visiting, and it’s making me feel even farther from him. I’m not a priority. THE priority.

My phone feels too light to carry the heaviness of this conversation, this argument, this epic fury. He says he is feeling fragile, a word he has never used with me to tell me how he is feeling. I kind of want him to feel fragile. I want him to feel as bad as I do.

There is something about two weeks of separation that makes us go off like a timer. Our bodies are aching for each other; we want nothing more than for a head to be on a lap while watching Gilmore Girls. I want him close enough so he can reach his fork over and eat the remainder of food on my plate. Instead, every day I wake up grabbing at thin air, fingers out stretched.

It’s hard to tend to someone else’s wound when you yourself are also bleeding.