Ben is gone….

He was supposed to leave last Friday but due to a fuck up with his flight booking he ended up staying an extra 5 days. I have a heavy feeling in my heart. I knew all along that he would be leaving so it’s not like it was a surprise I didn’t see coming, but it doesn’t make the situation any easier. The last 4 weeks have been amazing, I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

The four of us are on this amazing adventure around the world but at the same time it’s super shitty. We’ve met some amazing people and as soon as we become close it’s time to say goodbye again. Even if Ben didn’t leave today, I would be leaving eventually anyways. I’ve said bye to my friends at home but I know I’ll be going back there one day and they’ll still be there. When you meet people traveling it’s difficult to say if you’ll ever see each other again. The goodbye is always sad because you always say yeah we’ll meet up in some part of the world, you can come visit me in (insert country here) or I can come visit you in (insert country here), and I think deep down inside we know it’s a lie.

I hope I’m wrong this time. I hope this isn’t the end.

To my dear Ben, thank you for being so wonderful to me, for taking care of me, for listening to my stupid stories, for appreciating Universal Solider as much as I do, for teaching me about Farmville, for the good times, for the laughs and for the love.

On my last day in Istanbul, I had to get a root canal and our apartment flooded, I think this country is telling us to get the fuck out…

Our last souvenirs from Seoul.

My marriage ended in October. Tomorrow it’ll be one month and twenty six days. I’ve written fifty-seven different eulogies, and I start over every time. I haven’t found the kind of language that does it justice, or even a way to communicate how I feel.

Tomorrow will be Thanksgiving, and it feels oddly symbolic. Tonight, there’ll be no shopping, no oven, no pies. We won’t fall asleep together. I won’t spend tomorrow with family, walking the dog, watching football, setting the table. I won’t pour her a second glass of wine or eat two helpings of dessert. There’s no house to clean when we’re done.

Tomorrow I should be thankful. After all, she’ll be happier this way– but I feel lost, angry, regretful. I feel that this has been the biggest failure of my life. And most of the time I feel nothing.

After three Thanksgivings together, it’s hard to remember the day otherwise. We started traditions, saved recipes, took pictures. We had a box for the champagne corks we got on our anniversaries with two inside. We rented movies on Friday night.

It’s good to be in Saigon on Thanksgiving, lost with friends who are all lost too. I can’t be reminded of it here. I’m a thousand miles from the snow, ten thousand from the blanket, and further from the beating heart beneath it. It’s cold in Minnesota, colder in Saigon.

Buzz, excitement, anticipation, adventure – such words have been the cornerstones of our vocabulary.

But one feeling that has crept slowly this final week – seeming to leak in between the tiny cracks in my crammed schedule – has been disorientation.  It is a curious mix of confusion (is everything going to change?), sadness (the departure of the familiar), even doubt (am I ready for this?).

I am still reeling from uprooting myself from the Bay Area and a network of friends 6 years in the making, from California and my family, from a 2-year stint with my first and only post-college employer.  Seattle simply never became “home” – 2 mere months in the haze of double jobs and a jarring low-budget lifestyle.

It all reminds me of the slow ascent up a roller coaster: excited chatter with the friends beside you, heart racing with anticipation, the slow metallic clicking as your feet leave the platform to hang in that intermediary space between the stable ground and the screaming ride.

So it is with a mix of emotions that I approach the end of that ascent.  In less than 6 hours, we will step down off the plane and start that descent.