I saw a photo on Instagram that @justinbaldoni posted about a week ago.  It captured the back view of a  couple jumping off of a pier holding hands and let’s just say they had weathered some years in those bodies.  His post was mostly about the “ache” we wrote about a couple of weeks ago; about life being the heartache AND the happiness.

At the beginning of his post though he wrote about something that caught my attention and I haven’t been able to let it go.  He said, even though he had been in the same house with his wife for months, he missed her.  I understood instantly what he was saying.

Yes, we have all been physically together for months and part of us longs to “miss” the other person while they are on a business trip or at work or just somewhere other than beside us at home.  However, what he was trying to say is that he misses their pre-quarantine life as it pertains to their relationship.  Yes, that’s it.  That is what I have been feeling.  I miss making plans, taking trips, going to dinner with friends and impromptu date nights.  I miss life with my hubby.  I miss the things we usually do together.

The last month has been especially hard at my house.  We have had some non-Covid related illnesses, doctor’s visits, ER visits, cancelled get-togethers, missed birthdays, migraines, weeks of bland food, and a million tiny little annoyances that threatened to make me lose my mind.  It’s been such a mind numbing month that I really thought when I knocked my drink off the counter at 5:30 am before my morning run, that it was going to be the thing that broke me.  It didn’t, but it came close.  None of these things are big.  Like you, we have done months like these many times over the years.  The difference was that I was already feeling lonely and defeated BEFORE life took another swing at us.  Isn’t that how all of us are feeling?  We try to be positive and have some normalcy and then we just get kicked in the teeth again. It starts to feel like we are just walking around bracing ourselves for the next disappointment.  I know, we are supposed to be all sunshine and sarcasm, but 4 months and counting feels like forever until we will see the sun again.  I was beginning to feel like I couldn’t conjure up a piece of positivity or empathy no matter how hard I tried. I felt mad at the world, but when I read that instagram post I realized I wasn’t mad, I was sad and missing life and I definitely wasn’t the only one feeling this way.  There was something about that perspective that triggered something in me that felt a little like hope.

This weekend, we did our usual work in the yard along with some projects around the house, but then we made some plans for the next couple of weeks while we ate take out on our patio.  It felt so refreshing to be thinking about something other than just surviving another weekend at home.  We made plans to go to the mountains for a couple of days to work and just get away.  We made plans to drive to Nashville to see our kids, who we miss like crazy.  We made plans to move our youngest daughter to college.  Our oldest will be moving to another state soon for work and we dreamed up ways we could help her without intruding on her life plans. We bought a new kitchen table and thought up ways to make small changes to our living and dining area to freshen it up.

It may not sound like much to you, but this is us.  We are planners and doers and this whole being at home not knowing what to plan or when to plan is counterintuitive to who we are at our core. Sure, we enjoy going out to dinner, seeing friends and taking trips, but the truth is that if we can just get back to who we are as a couple we won’t miss everything else so much.

Who are you missing that might be sitting right in front of you?