I'll Be Right Beside You Dear

In the days leading up to leaving there was too much to do.
Tickets. Passports. Goodbye lunches. Meetings. So many meetings.

Except with you.
No meetings with you.
We both thought that I would leave with no goodbye.

Your refusal to accept that I would get on the plane.
I know exactly what you thought. You thought I'd never board the plane if I couldn't see you to say goodbye. You thought if you held out, then I wouldn't actually go. And everything would be okay.

My knowing that I was failing to make you understand that I had no choice.
It was time for me to go.

***

But the day I flew, I did what neither of us had thought we could handle.
On the way to LAX, I told the taxi driver to drive me to where I knew you'd be.
And there you were.

Tired. Looking so tired. And sad.
Your running top had shrunk and was unusually tight on you. I know you left it in the dryer too long.
You had shorts on but your legs were thin and they weren't tanned anymore.
I knew you hadn't been surfing or even near the water even once.
You weren't wearing your Rainbow sandals.
Shoes. Socks. And shorts. And too tight running top.
In 110 degrees.
Your hair was sticking up like you'd just got out of bed.
Only I know you - and I know that your hair was sticking up because you're not sleeping anymore.
You're staying up through the nights. Sad. Stressed. Confused. Exhausted.


I gave you your present and you said, 'No. You can't go.'
And I said,  'I have to go.'
And you said, 'No. Don't go. Tear it up now. Tear up your ticket now.'
And I said, 'I had to see you. The taxi's waiting outside. I have to go now.'
And you said, 'No. You can't go.'

You were frantic with grief and confusion.

I said 'Let me say goodbye. I'll be back as soon as I can be. I'll be back.'
And you wouldn't let me hold you.
And you wouldn't make eye contact.
And all you said over and over again, looking at the floor, shifting your feet, dripping with grief:

'You're not going. You're not going. You're not going.'

And then I had to go.

I walked to the taxi knowing that you were behind me.
But I couldn't turn around to face you because if I looked at your beautiful face and into your aching eyes, I might not be able to get into the taxi. 
 You said over and over, 'You can't leave. You can't go. No'

And eventually you roared, sobbing, both of us sobbing:

'NO! NO! NO!'

And I got in the taxi.

I looked out the window and I could see you: you were standing in the driveway, one hand shading your eyes from the sun, your gaze directed at me, as if in total disbelief.
I was crying too hard to tell the driver what to do, but he didn't need to be told.
He said 'If you're ready, nod and I'll drive to the airport. You don't need to speak.'
And I nodded.
And as he drove, I looked at you from the rear screen window as you looked at me moving further away, and I looked at you becoming smaller and smaller in the distance.

All the way to LAX I wondered if I was going to tell the driver to turn the car around, but somehow I didn't say a word. When I got there, even after I checked in, in those last few seconds just before going through security, I wondered if I should instead walk in the other direction, and get myself home to you, so that I could hold you through the night and you could finally get some sleep again.

***

We both knew then that it's not forever. But it was a terrible time to have to leave - in the continued aftermath of your grief for your mother, and the huge processing and re-organizing that's left because of her loss, whilst you're in the middle of developing a property,

'I need you now,' you've since written to me. 'How could you leave?'

You're still, to this day oblivious to all those 'rules' that you had invented for me, that I had to follow to help you manage your stress. You don't understand that it was your rules that made it impossible for me to stay with you this summer. You genuinely don't understand that nobody who writes for a living could actually live under a set of rules that involved agreeing to not writing.

When I tell you this, you say wide eyed and sincerely,

'But why?'

And you mean it. Sincerely. And you'll go on, sweetly:

'Why not a for a few years until I get through this? If you help me too, all my stress will be over quickly: maybe in under two years. And the you can write again. All I'm asking for is no writing for the next two years, that's all.'

And you'll be asking the question in all seriousness: 'No writing for two years, that's all...' 

Because amongst the things that are very hard for you are the ability to see things from someone else's point of view, and the ability to predict or feel someone else's emotion: empathy.

So when I say:

'Honey, I can't tell you I won't write. That won't work for me,'

You say, simply:

'Why?'

And you are genuinely bewildered at how I can love you and still say no.

Because this is a love on the Spectrum: with anxiety, and rules, and not being allowed to hold you when you're stressed, and no eye contact when it's all overwhelming, and where you literally don't sleep for days in a row because of stress and sensory overload, and confusion, and lack of understanding, and goodbyes that don't make any sense to you, and even more confusion.

That's You.

And that's okay. Why should I expect you to understand something that your brain isn't wired to be able to do?  It's a neurodiverse world. And I don't love you just to be understood at all times.

I love you because it's what I was born to do: to love you just the way you are, whatever's going on.

And for whatever the areas that we struggle in,  there are the areas that make my heart soar:

The most intelligent, sincere, loving, gentle, beautiful, divine, thoughtful, heart in the whole universe.

That's You too.
And that's why I'm the one who's blessed. By You.


***

So it's not forever.
And you were right: with more time you'll feel better, things will lift, you'll be under less pressure and you won't need those rules anymore. That's how this mysterious condition works. The more stress you're under, the more rigid and inflexible you have to be about your rules.
But in time, it will subside. And you'll get back to being you.

And in the meantime I'll be back.
All this will pass my sweet, sweet love.

Every day, I miss you.
I remember you in the sun, on the beach in Laguna - on new year's eve at sunset, the day I fed rice to the fish in the ocean, and you threw a coconut into the sea because a Vedic astrologer had told us there would be cosmic benefits for us if we did.
We climbed the rocks to the edge of the Ocean.
There was sunlight pouring over you.
I took that picture.

My god I miss you.

You send me messages about what you're doing to the property and I close my eyes and I'm with you.

You send me pictures of your time with Amma telling me the prayers that you did for us both; and the blessings that you received for both of us; and I see you standing in the drive way that day watching my taxi move away, and I think I am the luckiest girl in the world to have found YOU.

So maybe you'll come over here and you'll sail a boat around the Scottish islands. Now that I'm here there are so many things I want for you to see. Maybe you'll meet me in Rome. Or Paris. Maybe we'll go to India together in the winter and spend six months at the ashram before we go back to Laguna.

Every day until then, you're the first thing I think of when I wake.
And the last thing I think of before I sleep.

I miss you. 
My, sweet, special, love through time and space.