Missing

While it’s true some very nice things have happened lately (video chat with D., semi-gainful semi-employment, a couple of finished scarves, early voting), and that I have had recent moments of great happiness, and that things are going pretty well for me in general (for which I truly am grateful) I have to tell you, darlings—I am really missing everyone right now. Really really missing everyone, everyone.

I miss people in Seattle. I miss people in Wellington. I miss people in the Bay Area. I miss people in the UK. I miss people in Boston, and I miss people in New York. I miss people in Rarotonga and in Samoa and in Australia. I even miss people in Miami who are physically here in the same city but whom I still can’t manage to see very often or talk to very much because of work and kids and geographic inconvenience and everything else that keeps us away from everyone we love.

I miss my wives and my gay boyfriends. I miss my bellydance sisters. I miss my cousin. I miss my former co-workers and my former housemates. I miss the people I go to shows with and the people I make dinner with, the people I walk around Green Lake with and the people I sit in the hot tub with. I miss people I met on dive boats and in backpackers, people I met through the internet, people I met because their flattie was having a party and I happened to be in town doing errands so I just went over and we all ended up talking half the night. I miss people who now have multiple babies I’ve never met but who still refer to me as Auntie Chiara. I miss people I haven’t seen in years and people I saw just a couple of months ago, people I’d never met in person but with whom, when I finally did meet them, I talked and laughed as if we’d known each other forever.

(And you don’t need me tell you how much I miss D., do you, I don’t even have to mention it because you know and you’ve been there and you’re knitting your brow and shaking your head in sympathy with me right now. You know how I stared at his face in the webcam on Friday, how I recognized the walls of the room he was in but couldn’t understand why I could see him but not touch him, why I couldn’t crawl through the screen and into his arms, why I can’t be with him right now.)

I am dealing with all this, however, by remembering that I’ve chosen to be where I am now and that I am continuing to choose it. I’m dealing with it by concentrating on the gift of being able to spend time with my family in such a way as I haven’t for years, and very likely will not get to for years to come. I’m dealing with it by making cakes in the middle of the afternoon and by learning to embroider and by obsessing over politics. I’m dealing with it by hopscotching around the A href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physalia_physalis”>Portuguese men-o-war on the beach and by dodging the iguanas at the Quiet Gardens and by staring up at the military macaws flying over traffic on US1. I’m dealing with it with Facebook and email and Skype and texting and good old fashioned talking on the phone. I’m dealing with it by trying to live right here, right now.

This isn’t peculiar, any of this, to being in Miami, by the way: I have never lived close to every single person I love at any one time and I have always missed someone, somewhere. But I guess that I’m actually lucky in that, because probably not everyone has the chance to meet so many people all over the world and to fall in so many types of love with so many amazing individuals, and I think the fact that everyone is so spread out means that pretty much anywhere I can go in the world I either a) already have friends or family there or b) will be finding some new ones real soon. That’s big, that’s important, that’s proud. That’s what I look forward to about heaven.