Interlude

I apologize if this post is too overbearing in a sense that it contains something much more personal than what I have been revealing lately. However, I feel especially compelled to write it, since last time I was leaving for this part of the world, I was singing quite a different song – a song of freedom that one gains from one’s own solitude, as one chooses to leave a predictable life of false comfort in return for nothing but turmoil and chaos. This one is almost a complete opposite, showing just how profoundly I have changed in the last two and half years…and as unexpected as this change may have appeared to me at first glance, it was, after all, quite simple and predictable…

Leaving for Georgia was heartbreaking. I cried at Dulles airport. If I were not so tired, I would have cried on the plane to London. I cried when I arrived at Heathrow, cried and slept intermittingly during the flight to Tbilisi. The boy and I had spent the day of my departure together, wandering the streets of D.C., laughing, joking, playing, being silly. Despite my overall excitement over the upcoming trip, I knew that a big part of me wished that I had not undertaken such a lengthy assignment, that I had rather chosen to do my research in Armenia only – and that is merely so that I could see my family.

Eleven weeks suddenly felt like not only separation of space and time, but that of a world of difference that would never be reconciled by merely conveying stories or showing photographs. As if by not being able to share these experiences in real time with a loved one would make them seem less valid, less important or remarkable. Of course, I could consider these experiences as something only of my own – mine and no one else’s, but neither the nature of this trip, nor the “privateness” of these experiences seemed normal or natural any more…

Once all I wished was nothing more than the unshared “privateness” of an experience – any experience. Unshared, untainted moments that were mine alone in their entirety. I remember how I longed for these moments when I was married; I remember how much I wish that I was free, unattached, alone, without having to be a part of someone else’s life, without having to contribute to someone else’s happiness… I remember the painful longing out of which Perfect Vacuum came out. I remember how burdensome was the idea of being attached to someone, which made me write Another Life. Looking back at myself at those particular moments of past I still find myself capable of relating to these emotions quite vividly- but this time only in the past, without being able to bring them into my present.

I no longer want to be alone. And I am attached, more strongly and securely than I ever thought I would be able to get attached to another human being. It no longer hurts; it is no longer a burden.

It’s quite simple, actually. Wishing that I had another life, however twisted and far-fetched explanations that I used to rely on in the past was nothing more but the fact that I was unhappy with the one I had then. Another Life was merely a distraction, an escape to another reality; Perfect Vacuum was nothing but the desire to be alone during a destructive and unhealthy relationship. I no longer need another life, because I am way too in love with the one that I’ve got. I no longer want to be alone, because I see that being with someone is more rewarding than all the solitude in the world would ever hold… I am happy with a kind of happiness that is beyond being happy on one’s own – that is, being able to be happy from within, while being able to share it with someone else. And I find it truly remarkable. I do not think it could get any better. I do not think that I could have ever asked for more.

What hurts now is long separations. What is distressing is having to spend this summer alone. Despite the fact that throughout the last ten months or so we lived in two different cities, miles and miles away, we never spent more than three weeks without seeing one another. This summer will be the longest we have been apart. Of course I do know that I’m neither the first one, nor the last one, nor it has been my only time to go through such kind of temporary separations. Even if I have, in the past, weathered long-distances for much more than some two and half months, I can no longer take it like I used to before. And yet, however trivial all of this sounds, it is still hard, sad and heartbreaking, yet comforting at the same time to know that I have so much to go back to in Richmond. And that makes me that much more impatient.