I've never enjoyed travelling much. I'm a very nervous flier, I always want to be in the airport way too early, and I can't help but think of all the things that can go wrong. This has resulted in a weird phenomenon - on the travelling day or the day before I go into this mode when the only thing I want is to get the travels over and done with, and I completely stop living in the moment. Time becomes a strange quantity - always counting hours, always wishing I was already on the other side - and stops being quality. Fortunately, as soon as I have arrived in my destination I forget all about it and I can be present again. (Surprisingly enough, I have seen the pattern being broken recently, as I have been able to fully enjoy my time in Sweden without going into my "in-between" mode the day I need to fly back.)
This is how I feel about life in general right now. I'm stuck in this strange "in-between" time that is becoming increasingly difficult to bear. One life has ended and another one has not yet begun and I am stuck in between those two. Not for long, thankfully; I will fly to Sweden this coming Tuesday. But I find it harder and harder to connect with my immediate surroundings here on an emotional level. Most of my things have been sorted and packed by now (so much dust everywhere!), I've made countless trips to a second-hand shop with my old clothes and books and tea cups. The kitchen cupboards have been cleaned. I've made my last important visits - to Türi (dad + some very good friends), to my cousin in Tartu, to my old violin teacher, to A's mum and 103 (!) year-old granny. A couple of outings in cafes with friends. Had my teeth checked at a dentist this morning. Office desk is almost cleared. Hair-dresser on Monday. Then I'm done.
And the other reality, as close as it is, is still out of my reach. S. sends me pictures from Ekebyholm castle where his parents are working very hard to get everything cleaned and ready for the wedding. And these pictures make me a little emotional exactly because I can't be there yet. I wish the wait was already over and I could take my suitcase in one hand and my wedding dress in another, breathe in and out and just go.
Have others felt like this, too? Or am I the odd one? I wish someone wrote a book about this.
The strangest thing of all is the thought that after next Tuesday I will not have to leave S. any more. Sometimes I tell him jokingly that I've gotten such a lasting trauma from the distant relationship that I will literally never leave him, not even for a day haha. But serisouly speaking, I don't know what it feels like, not to live under the dictatorship of plane tickets or school holidays any more. In that sense, I am looking forward to the mundane everyday life even more than the excitement of the wedding. How does it feel to come home to the same person every evening, the person whose presence you once missed so much it made you cry?
I don't know if I should make a bigger effort to be present here and now. I'll try tonight. I'll go and buy some cake from our legendary Werner cafe - because I have just received feedback on my dissertation's 5th chapter from my supervisor ("very well written, only some editorial comments"). And maybe by eating the cake, watching Wimbledon and listening to rain outside my window (and not minding all the dust rolls) I can still feel it's worth being here and now, too.
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| With A's granny on Sunday |
