ulrich is away on a business trip for a few days. initially i had been looking forward to a bit of alone time; not that i was excited about his absence per se, but there were things on my to-do list which i was eager to get around to, some of which require letting my thoughts marinate in stillness and solitude.
but today, after i got home from dropping him off at the airport, my first reaction wasn’t one of relief or eagerness but rather a sudden, collapsing feeling, as if all the scaffolding which is built into my day-to-day routine had suddenly disappeared. sensing the dull onset of a headache i lay down on the couch with the cats and played duolingo, three rounds of german and one each of chinese and spanish. after some time i began to write, and then after a longer while i realized i should perhaps stretch my legs and go for a walk… which is something ulrich would have surely suggested far before the thought occurred to me. during my twilight walk i found myself wandering further than usual and turning onto unexpected side roads. i traversed places ulrich and i have certainly been to before but which we would rarely choose to visit on a weekday evening, often because of his busy meeting schedule.
this isn’t the first time that Ulrich and I have been apart since i moved to Germany, so it was strange to experience this sensation ausgerechnet jetzt (now, of all times). the world of possibilities was stretching and expanding with each step i took away from the well-worn ulrich & yuelian path. it was as if, just from Ulrich’s short absence, a thread had been yanked loose and all of the dependencies and my pre-existing expectations about how to spend an evening were toppling down one after another. the resulting emptiness was at once dizzying, daunting and freeing.
i searched for my lonesome shadow along the length of the concrete sidewalk, but the sun had already dipped beneath the sky.
Hope you're eventually able to find some grounding in the coming days. Here for you if you'd like a digital friend to talk with in Twitter DMs. :)
oooo this whole piece, and that last line, golden! In 5-1/2 years, Jim and I have spent exactly one night apart when I was in hospital. I feel like that's super rare and 1950s of us haha.