Tuesday, July 9, 2013

A little reprieve

This whole getting packed up and ready to move 1500 miles thing is rough.  Its even harder when the one person that would be the biggest support to me is already in our new hometown working her new job.  L has been in Colorado since the end of May, she left days after R's 3rd birthday, and it has not been easy with her gone.

For a few weeks I was juggling school, packing, kids, and legal paperwork so I could get permission to move the kids out of state.  Once school ended and I got the bulk of the paperwork for the courts done things should have gotten easier right?  Well sure!  Except they didn't.  My load got a little lighter, what with no homework and paperwork to do, but emotionally things got tougher.  L and I have done the long distance thing before and we knew what it was like so we thought we were prepared.  We weren't.  Not even close.

After having lived together for 5 months, having to separate again was the last thing we had expected to do.  Our relationship is sound, and I'm still ridiculously happy in it, but the first month or so that she was gone was really difficult.  We normally communicate pretty well but emotionally this separation was harder on both of us than the others and because of that the communication really suffered.  Talking ,skyping, and texting didn't really happen a lot for that first month as L got settled in our new town and in her new job.  Those things all reminded her of just how much she missed me, the kids and our life we were building before everything got crazy with this moving stuff.  I tried my hardest to understand her new emotional distance that helped her cope with the physical distance, but where she needed her space I need contact more than ever.  It was brutally hard.

Then something happened a couple weeks ago, I honestly don't know what changed, but one day she started joking with me again!  Whatever had been going on eased up and things have been getting back on track.  I think it had something to do with both of us realizing we only had a matter of weeks until we knew we were going to get to see each other again.  Regardless, the return of her joking around and more open demeanor brought instant relief for me.

While things had been going better for us, this past weekend though brought total stress relief for an amazing mini-visit.  L was here for less than 48 hours but it was perfect.  Her mom had come to visit and eyeball the house to see if she wanted to buy it (she did!) and L hadn't seen her in a while so she had booked a ticket up here.  For the first time in months I was asleep before midnight and the dang eyelid twitch that has been plaguing me since she left magically disappeared.  While both of those things were nice, the best part was seeing her and the kids together again.  I know I've said it many times before but C and R absolutely adore L and seeing the three of them together just melts my heart every single time.  To see the woman I love being loved by and loving on my littlest loves is, to me, pure perfection.  Having our little family complete again for even such a short time was just what I needed to get me through these next few hectic weeks.

So now L is gone to Colorado again, the kids are being little terrors like normal, and packing is super stressful.  But! I've had my emotional batteries recharged.  I can do this.  And in less than a week we will be leaving this town behind and starting our five day journey to L and our new life.