My plane has just pushed off on its way to LGA for the first leg of my trip. It’s hard to imagine that just about three years ago I was boarding a plane like the one I’m on now, beginning another journey that would change my life.
It is completely surreal that in just 48 hours I will again be with Pia and that shortly after that we will be walking hand-in-hand across a field to the tiniest little wooden church tucked inside an alien volcanic landscape. It’s hard to process all the emotions that we have been going through over the past months that we’ve been apart.
Pia last visited at the beginning of March. During that visit, like all the others this year, we had just enough time to forget that we live apart. And like all other trips, about four days before departure, one of us gets ‘the look’—the pallid look of desolation that spreads across one’s face as their heart sinks into their stomach under the weight of imminent loss. As soon as the look sets in, both of us are hopeless. It’s as if a bubble forms between the two of us, cordoning us off from the rest of the world as we try to hang on to every last moment of our time together.
I wish I could say that this goes away with time, but, in fact, the inverse is true: with each successive visit our hearts sink deeper, our tears flow more readily, and urge to hold on becomes more severe. This suffering reveals something I find quite beautiful between Pia and myself. When faced with hopelessness, we turn to one another. We do not hide, but walk forward hand-in-hand, facing the world together.
So it’s with these thoughts that I make my departure. There will be much to celebrate over the next month and I can’t wait. And when the emptiness returns, I will cherish that there is someone out there who can make me feel so deeply. Some people never find that person. I did in the middle of Iceland. And now I’m on my way to find her again.
