touching Archer

Just the other day, I told my child that sometimes, when you can't think of what to write, the best thing to do is to start talking. Then write down whatever you say. I'm taking my own advice, as I type this, right now.

~

Archer isn't here - but he's always here, his presence is palpable in my heart.
Still, I miss him, and I wish he were home. He has been gone so much lately (for work) that even when he's home, safe and sound in his house, less than 30 miles away from mine, I miss him. Suddenly, 30 miles seems like a very long way.

Time is precious; he always tells me that. His time is so precious, because he rarely spends it on the things he actually wants to spend it on. He would explain it differently, I know. That's my perspective, not his.

I'm coming to realize how precious touch is.

I know, from an academic standpoint, that touch is crucial to the development of infants and children, and for the well-being of people in all age groups. There are enough studies on that to fill a metric ton with citations alone.

Lately, I'm seeing a new aspect of the importance of touch in my own life, and specifically in my relationship with Archer. We've seen each other so little this month; he's been gone so much that I'm realizing how much I depend on being able to touch him. It's actually effecting my cognitive functioning. The other night, I was shopping for the birthday party after my class, and I was so fucking spaced out that I felt high, in a not-good way. It wasn't lack of sleep, or any other affect of physical lack/whatever. I just don't function well without him. That was an extreme example, but the echoes of that same sensation, that same slack in my cognition, have been present to varying degrees during each of his more recent trips. The extreme example just brought that to my attention.

This specific aspect of my depression - the inability to string two thoughts together - is usually an aspect dependent on my mood actually dropping quite low, and that drop happening in conjunction with some sort of panic or fear. It's as though this aspect is happening independently of the noticeable mood drop/fear increase which usually seem to cause it. Perhaps I'm wrong though - perhaps the mood drop is there, at least, and I'm just not acknowledging it. There's a certain emptiness that's not directly tied to his absence. It's the same flavor of emptiness that I've used in the past, to tell myself that the persistently sad feelings I had, were unimportant. As if ignoring them would make them go away. I suppose I thought it did work that way, to an extent. I'm not sure what to do with this information. I need to think about it some more, get Archer's opinion.

~

He comes home the day after tomorrow.
He doesn't need to be picked up,
but I'm meeting him at the airport anyway.
I need him.