All that matters

Joe is on his way to Newport News tonight. He's got an early morning meeting with the city manager, and it didn't make sense to try and drive down there before the meeting tomorrow, so he's staying at a hotel tonight. That's not really my point though.

Every time, Joe packs a bag and leaves to go anywhere without me it takes a great deal of intellectual assertion and mental control to keep from panicking that I will never see him again. I try to remember every detail of telling him goodbye in case it's the last memory I have of him. I'm always sure to tell him to be careful and that I love him. Nothing left unsaid.

My head knows that I am reacting to an engrained reaction to having lost my father at a very young age. I know that I'm projecting my mother's life onto my own. I know there is no family curse that puts him in danger. That doesn't keep my heart from feeling like it's being squeezed by a large hand. It doesn't mean my soul doesn't feel like it's being ripped in two. It doesn't stop the headache that I get from fighting the anxiety.

I am grateful to have the intelligence, rationality and cognitive training to handle the irrational emotions behind my anxiety, but it doesn't really matter what I think or do. All that matters is the person who means the most to me in the entire world is away, and nothing will be right again until he's home.