Yes, I am in a retreat. A dream, almost, except it feels very real and it's not over-the-top. I'm grateful for that, yes.
I miss him very much. But not in that over-the-top from the movies kind of way. I miss him in the way that I think about him, and what it would be like if he were here next to me while I am laying out, or walking, hiking, driving, laughing. Listening to music loudly when I shower at night.
We have been off/on video chatting during my nights (his mornings) and my mornings (his nights) for the past few days. Usually, he's sleep(ing/y) when I'm fresh and ready for the day--I showed him the Greek ocean, the beach, and the town! Thank goodness for wifi outside the hotel, too.
Mostly, I miss his hands. How they feel, on my body, involuntary & necessary. All the little moments which I constantly crave. That is how we brighten. All those little moments.
Grand gestures are soufflés waiting to disappoint. I am already prepared for July's disappointment. I won't mention it further than this, but I was first excited, but now I fear I'll be heartbroken.
He asks me to lie down next to him. This makes me wistful. I would if I could shoot through the screen, I tell him. It's hard for me to see him all sleepy, asking for me to be near. But then, everything is hard.
I do not regret coming here. In fact, I'm feeling everything I thought I would be feeling. I'm neither eating too little nor too much. There's a word for this in Swedish: lagom. That's what my time in Kythera is like: lagom. Everything of the baby bear that Goldilocks preferred.
The poor girl. I want what she found, but without the shame of being found out. And without breaking (& entering).
But my life is like that: a series of apologies for my trial-and-error. And even upon finding something preferred, something just right, I can't have it in the end. I'm not really greedy, actually. Somehow, after Saabir, I learned to give a lot. As though I were repenting for all those years of things I took. I'm getting over my irrational and rational guilt.
I really should start writing that short story I had a dream about.
I miss my SF life, too. Like, I wish I could also have a month off--in my home as well. I will try to do that. I'll quit work at the end of June, when I'm moving out, so I can have my time in SF by myself. To give it a proper good bye.
I'm so wistful right now. For as miserable as they were, I almost miss the bouts of crying before I started feeling better. Now, I feel all wistful, and there are no tears, and I feel like my heart has gotten cold, or that I've lost the ability to feel.
I'm a mess, I feel like. Wanting all the time, to feel lagom with another, but then, disappointed, sad, or _______ when I am with another. I can't have my loneliness or my togehterness. I came to Greece to want neither. To be okay as I am, to figure out what I want, and be okay with that too.
July 22 will be very difficult, no matter what. But I know, too, that the future will be beautiful. So I smile now, in anticipation of that.
I am the shore of the beach. Every crashing tumult that comes, ebbs. And before I can lament the thing which crashed first, the next will be happening, and the one after that . . .
Progress is made. The slow abrasion of pebbles and rocks to soft sand--the treasures the sea brings, the things it takes. There is no victim.
I am alive.
