Last weekend, Tom asked me to give him a call as he had some news. “Here we go..” I thought, “they’re going to keep him there for a bit longer, because there’ll be staffing issues, or delays somewhere, or something’s happened.” Thankfully, and really quite surprisingly he told me he was coming home early. Three days early. So now, rather than having an entire weekend to get everything ready as I had planned, I now had five days. And I would be working four of them. I had to stop myself getting stressed and frustrated, I’ve been waiting for him to come home for four whole months already, my entire life on pause near enough with plenty of stressful events to last until the next decade. But he was coming home at last!
Friday was busy, I had quite a few things to wrap up at work before I went away on leave for the week and the day passed so slowly. I was trying to work and attend meetings, and clean bits of the house whenever I had a few spare minutes. My parents came round to give me a hand and by mid afternoon, everything was ready.
I had a long wait though, he wasn’t due back to camp until around 10:30 in the evening and I felt every single minute waiting until I could leave to pick him up. I arrived a little bit early and parked up to wait. And then he was home! And it felt like he’d not been away at all, or that I’d just dropped him off the day before. He has always fit so perfectly into my life as if he’s always been there, and always meant to be here. It never feels as if we’ve been apart, even if we don’t speak very often.
It’s an odd feeling going straight back to normal. It almost feels as if those long four difficult months never happened. That I was never so low that just getting out of bed was the biggest success of the day, or that I’ve uprooted and moved our entire lives here by myself, spending two of those four months almost completely alone, and without being able to really see my pony, and then spending the other two months battling the worst insomnia I’ve ever had, and by all accounts not being 100% with it whilst trying to juggle being in a new place by myself, navigating increasing demands from work, getting back into a regular(ish) routine with Skye and doing my best to look after myself as well.
But now he’s home, and overnight, everything is lighter. My sleep is completely back to normal, I have laughed and smiled so much and I just feel so at peace. I feel like myself again, and I feel as if I have come home too. And now that we are both home together at last, we can finally begin our next chapter.
Currently
Reading
I finished The Slow Regard of Silent Things in less than 24 hours. It’s not a conventional read and I’m still a bit baffled by it, but there are some lovely quotes in there that really give you pause for thought.
“It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.”
“To be so lovely and so lost. To be all answerful with all that knowing trapped inside. To be beautiful and broken.”
“But how awful would that be? How terrible to live surrounded by the stark, sharp, hollowness of things that simply were enough?”
Watching
Since Tom has been home we’ve started watching the third season of Only Murders in the Building. It’s one of our favourites and we have an awful lot of tv to catch up on together. I can’t wait!
Listening to
I’ve been listening to Shania Twain’s new album and I love it. I’ve been listening to Shania since I was a child and Come on Over was the first album I ever bought with my own money. I have always been a country girl at heart!
Loving
Having Tom home. Getting back to normal. Gorgeous sunny weather. Spending time with friends and family. Pizza on a Saturday. Invigorating workouts. Long evenings at the yard. Laughing again. Small village life.