nothing less than my own heart

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AK is in Japan this week. It’s her first trip off the continent, and I’m excited for all the things she’s going to do and see, and how she’s going to fall in love with the country and not even realize it until she gets home and walks by a Sanrio store and finds herself so unexpectedly flooded with nostalgia that she buys a Batz Maru eraser.

Meanwhile, back on the home front, my big plan was to Get A Bunch Of Shit Done, the kind of stuff one never gets around to doing when one has any kind of social life: tune up my car, repot my plant, make an appointment with my oral surgeon, sleep for a full eight hours a night. Because I’m a geek, I was sort of excited about doing these things, and about the light, free, post-finals-esque feeling I would have when I was done.

I’ve checked a couple of items off my list, and I do feel a little bit lighter, but I also really, really miss AK. I’m having all sorts of fake conversations with her in my head. This morning, while cleaning my toilet (an important item on the list, although, for the record, I have cleaned my toilet many times in the year-and-some-months AK and I have been dating), I actually found myself illustrating something I was pretend-telling AK with real hand gestures.

Yeah, I need to get out.

Also, in addition to the fairly wholesome missing of AK, I have a teensy bit of anxiety. Other than a weekend in the Bay Area, this is the first time that AK has traveled while I’ve stayed home. In the year before B and I broke up, she traveled (electively and otherwise) a ton. For a while, she was gone almost every other week. We ultimately broke up while she was traveling. And while she claimed it wasn’t the cause, even she admitted that all that solo time gave her a chance to “sort things out.”

So basically I’m worried that if anyone has an opportunity to stop and think about it, and I’m not there to make a case for myself, they will conclude that I’m not so great after all.

Only a very, very small part of me thinks this, and I know that I often turn other emotions (sadness, for one) into anxiety, because I am a Klein.

As much as I’m anxious for AK to return (after I dust my shelves), staying close to home at all times is not a solution for either of us. Healthy people encourage their loved ones to grow. Which is why I always quote Dar Williams’ “Closer to Me” to myself:

Am I the habit you’re too tired to break? I want you to love me with every step you take.
What can you do with a day? What will you wake up and see? The farther you get, the closer to me….
You should leave this house, leave this town. All that’s left to chart is nothing less than your own heart.

But still, AK, if you’re reading this, hear my case: I am so great. And I think you’re great too, and adoration is a nice trait in a girlfriend, don’t you think?

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