It was almost exactly a year ago that I poured my heart out into this blogpost. It feels rather surreal reading this post now and realising how life can sometimes completely upend itself!
TL;DR My husband and I hit rock bottom (like everyone else) when COVID-19 hit. Amidst the growing tension of the Coronavirus, there was now this additional fear of losing employment (thanks to the economy shrink and subsequent job cuts). Thankfully both of us survived the job cuts and took this as an opportunity to look at our lives and our relationship with a renewed perspective.
It's incredible how much life has changed between then and now. While things have blossomed on our relationship front, on the more personal side my husband buried himself into studies and ended up getting an admit from one of the most prestigious business schools of the world - Kellogg School Of Management. As I write this blog, he is miles away from me at Evanston, twenty miles from Chicago in the United States of America.
When we first learnt about the admit, my husband felt overjoyed - I, well I felt a kaleidoscopic range of emotions. Naturally I was euphoric about my husband's blood, sweat and tears coming to fruition but then the selfish side of my personality was slowly taking over. What would this change really mean for our relationship? Well, what this would entail is that I would have to be in Australia alone with no family and a few friends while my husband would be in the US for one year (and potentially beyond). What! I'd have to LIVE ALONE for a whole year - wait, I didn't sign up for that.
Come with me and I'll take you on an emotional voyage, my emotional voyage and how I built resilience in the aftermath of my husband's departure to a different continent.
Six months before departure
Emotional meter - delight
We had six months before my husband had to leave for the US - the idea to deliberate on something that was a long way off and to let that come in the way of the celebratory news seemed wrong on every level. So I decided to bask in the glory of my husband's success, I was awfully proud of his achievement. He had done it...we had done it. We made sure to make the most of the moment and celebrate the occasion to our heart's content.
Three months before departure
Emotional meter - fear
The clock was ticking and it was ticking fast. What seemed like six months away started feeling more real and palpable, like an audio that started as a mild background score but was now amplifying every single day. I physically started to feel the pangs of it with a certain heaviness in my heart all the time. Is this what fear felt like?
I found myself collapsing sporadically both mentally and physically with a zillion questions floating around in my head - "Will I be able to live alone after being so reliant on my husband all these years especially since COVID and the work from home situation had brought us so much closer", " How will I deal with being lonely?", "What if I need his advice on a professional matter"? Somehow I couldn't seem to remember my life before him and the fear was overwhelming. "What will become of me when he is gone?"
One month before departure
Emotional meter - anxiety
Now the proverbial S&^t had hit the fan. I found myself having anxiety attacks pretty much every single day while my husband tried turn this situation into a personal boon for me by suggesting that I use this time effectively to do the things I had been deferring all along simply because I didn't have 'enough time'. Well, "Here's your time now", he said with a beam on his face. But his words of wisdom fell on my deaf ears.
How will I ever bring myself to living without him for a whole goddamn year. Is this a joke? The separation anxiety started to grow more and more every day. I turned to family and friends for support but when they echoed my husband's opinion, I just felt like no one really understood me.
I realised in that moment how solitary some life experiences are...I had to find the courage and more importantly a coping mechanism to not only survive but thrive in this one year...but how?
While the lens had slowly started to flip... I had an excellent idea to get a pet to keep me company while my husband would be gone. It was at that very moment that I decided to be a cat mom and adopt a three month old kitten. And man did that bolster my spirits! The kitten was this cherubic looking baby and I decided to named him 'Caramal' after the color on his plush ginger and white fur.
The last month was kind of a turning point for my psyche and served as a very good example of how fungible and neuroplastic the human brain was. Given, I had no other option, my brain had slowly adapted and was coming to terms with being alone with Caramal...
The night before departure
Emotional meter - sadness
The month literally flew with Caramal keeping me and husband great company. We showered him with love and care while simultaneously taking on his scratching and biting blows. My husband had especially gotten quite fond of him and often joked that he would miss him more than he would miss me. In this tumultuousness, we didn't realise when we were only a few days away from his fated day of travel to the US, June 1 '21.
I decided to take a few days off in the lead up period to his departure and time seemed to fly even faster and before we knew it, we were only a day away from his date of travel. Now, every hour mattered. We spent making the most of the day by getting packing out of the way first thing in the morning and then decided to enjoy the 'little things' - getting coffee from a nearby cafe, going for a walk in the park while intermittently reminding ourselves what the payoff for us was for this excruciating separation.
I had been dreading this moment for the last six months and now surprisingly I found the calm within me and what I desired the most at that instant was the anticipation of pain and suffering of being alone to END. My husband was emotionally hit as well, he was trying to be my pillar of strength all along but now he was getting weak in his knees. He started to second guess his decision of choosing to go for an MBA at 'this age' especially when the world now expected us to make babies (we are an Indian couple who is in their fifth year of marriage you see). And suddenly, just like that we swapped roles.
I shook him and reminded him that we were never the ones to stick to any template. We have been and will always be free-spirited and will never be bogged down by the so-called society's expectations from us. We needed to break the age related barriers and normalise certain things. And in the years to come we will build something beautiful together and this is the small price to pay for it in the meantime.
We both lay on the bed hugging for the rest of the remaining hours until it was time for him to leave on a one-way ticket to the US.