Going, going... But not yet gone.

The Mad Scientist has to go away this summer for a few months. The leaving and the going thing sent me spiraling into the fear of The Mr. having to do the same.

I know that none of these fears or at least the level of fear and anxiety that this is provoking, have anything to do with the 'right now.' Rationally, in my grown-up brain I expected this.

And then The Mr. gave me dates. He will be gone for two to three weeks right around our 1st wedding anniversary to train as an alternate for a year-long... ugh, I can't even say the word... a big D.

The knowledge that The Mr. will be gone for a couple weeks is manageable. The timing bites the big one as that month is not only our 1^st wedding anniversary, but his big Four-Oh. We’d talked about doing it big with a trip to Vegas or something memorable for the milestone. I went skydiving for my Three-Oh, and plan on continuing the trend by really celebrating those decade milestones. The Mr. agrees, just not with the skydiving thing. That’s not his cup of tea.

We are still seven months away from that, and a lot can happen. We don’t know what things with The Mad Scientist will be like by then. We don’t know if we will have opened things up more, redefined our boundaries, made new friends closer to home… a lot can happen in 7 months. But The Mr. can turn into the King of ‘What-if’s’ pretty quickly. He gave me the dates on Wednesday while I was still working. I wanted to have a melt-down right then and there, but my break was over and I had to put on my Big Girl panties and continue being screamed at for another few hours. My root canal was Thursday. That meant that on Wednesday night I had to take a Xanax, then again on Thursday morning I was medicating to quell the anxiety I have over unwanted things drilling into my mouth. *Insert cute innuendo here*

My first real meltdown happened in the dentist’s chair. I was laying there doped up on Xanax with the nitrous mask strapped to my face. There weren’t any clear thoughts, just fear as I started to cry uncontrollably. The dentist and his assistant were just sitting there waiting for the topical numbing cream to take effect. My ear buds kept falling out and I had to move my glasses to wipe away the tears. The dentist was genuinely concerned and said that we didn’t have to do the work today if I wasn’t okay. I just asked if they would get The Mr. for me.

For over an hour The Mr. held my hand while they worked in my mouth. The nitrous high came and went as they mixed the oxygen flow. There were no thoughts except of the memory of huffing balloons full of nitrous with friends in my 20’s and thinking that The Mr. just *had* to try it. There was a small annoyance when I reached out and The Mr.’s watch was in between me and his skin. I unlatched it with surprising skill, given the situation. At another point when the oxygen was higher than the nitrous I heard the sounds of daytime TV from the screen they have mounted on the ceiling. I gestured to get them to turn it off. Pieces of forgotten ASL came back to me in that moment. The Mr. had no idea I knew any sign language at all.

Last night I had a little more of a meltdown. The tooth pain coupled with my ‘soft foods only’ diet had me hungry, cranky and the Xanax just killed any semblance of my ability to keep it together. I keep reminding myself that this is different than the marriage with my ExH was. The Mr. and I did move very quickly, but we have put so much time and effort into knowing each other inside and out. We talk about all the heavy things that people in other relationships keep hidden out of fear of rejection. We work through the issues that got in the way of being our true selves and never stop talking about everything- big and little.

I recently told the Mr. that when we met I knew he was still a work in progress. I had already spent years accepting who I am and how I got here. I have already learned my boundaries and why I’ve got them in place. He never had the chance to explore things the way I did. I told him that I knew some assembly was required. He has pushed some of his own boundaries by choice, and is working through the process of defining it all in his own language. We all need that.
 
Last weekend seems to still be weighing heavily on his mind:

“In that moment he lost a piece of the illusion. The line between reality and the pornographic fantasy he’d been fed for so long came crashing down. The immediate response of the cleanup crew was validating and allowed the mending to start right away. But in the aftermath it became clear that there were bigger holes to fill and he owned the only shovel in the world…. ”