Today—or is it yesterday by now?—I briefly had the post-visitor blahs, that feeling you get when visitors leave and you actively feel their absence. My friends from DC, one of whom I met in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot when I was 16 years old, were in New York last night to play a show. I used to see their band all the time when we all lived in Columbus, Ohio. I see them often enough now where I gave them keys to my apartment with a keychain that says “Best Couple Ever.”
I had my blahs only for about 15 minutes, after I handed off the keys to the friend of a friend who is staying in my apartment for the next few days and left to go exploring and I finished packing. It’s my turn to be the visitor now. I’m headed to Dublin as I type, to see my best friend. She’s lived in Ireland since right after college and did grad school there.
It’s so different from the first time I visited, when I was 22. My heart had been broken, and I decided on a whim to visit her. I booked a trip on Expedia and when I went to call call her, I learned she and some other long-term residents had been asked to moved from the hostel where she was staying. She hadn’t told me, I found out later, because her mom regularly called me for updates, and I am a terrible liar. She didn’t want her mom to worry as to her whereabouts. (And her mom had been calling me, wondering where she was.)
So I found myself with tickets to Ireland and no way to contact her, until I remembered the name of the pub where she worked. I rushed home from work to use my landline for long distance. The bartender answered. I said I was looking for my friend, but he replied she wasn’t in yet. “OK,” I said. “Can you give her a message for me? Can you tell her Josie is coming to visit next week?”
“Right, Josie’s coming,” he said.
“Oh, can you also tell her to call her mom?” I asked.
He laughed.
“Have you not been calling your mother?” the bartender scolded her when she arrived to work. “Oh, and Josie’s coming next week.”
These tickets were booked not too long ago. I didn’t have a return flight for a few days. I would say cancer makes me more impulsive now, but only a little bit. It more or less gives me the excuse to be more myself.
I’ve mentioned this before but there are pretty much high highs and low lows with my life for the past few years. The past few weeks have been weird. One of my cats has been sick. Last week looked grim, but he’s responding to medication. Still, for a few days before I left, he wasn’t quite out of the woods. I made the decision to board him at the vet, where they can straighten out his medications and keep an eye on him. It’s the right decision but my heart broke this morning as he curled up around my neck and purred and put a soft paw on each side of my face, blissfully unaware of my impending departure. When I corralled him into his carrier, one of the other cats sat on his carrier as if to keep me from taking his buddy. It was a moment of solidarity, an “I am Spartacus” moment.
While at the vet saying goodbye to him, I was sad to leave the cat but excited to see my friend and her family in Dublin. From there we’re going to Spain, one of my favorite places in the entire world. I’ve been there when I was four, when I was 16, and in my 20s, and I’ve always vowed to go back.
Then I’m going to pop over to Copenhagen for barely two days to see one of my friends. I met him on a street corner in downtown Columbus years ago. I had actually seen him in my apartment at least once before, when I lived with a mutual friend, so his face was vaguely familiar, but we ended up living in the same neighborhood and working near each other so I would see him at the grocery store and on the bus, sometimes giving him a hey-we-kind-of-know-each-other nod of acknowledgement. I had forgotten my gym shoes that day and was walking home early. As I neared a street corner, our paths intersected. “Who are you?” he asked me. “I see you everywhere.” We walked back to our neighborhood together and have been friends ever since.
I try to do so much and I feel like everything is a whirlwind. This time on the plane is full of stolen moments. I watched a whole movie without doing anything else. I am catching up on writing.
Today—it’s definitely yesterday now—I opened the carrier and kissed my cat’s nose and promised to be back soon. I wish sometimes that all the beings I like and love lived in the same place, but that’s not how it is. I lived in Ohio for so long but people moved away, then I moved to New York, and then people left from New York. My heart aches sometimes when I have to say goodbye to people again and again, but I know I am lucky to have so many people I care about and so many people who care about me, spread throughout the globe.
I keep also making new friends, and for that I am also grateful. Without the spreading out of my favorite people, I wouldn’t have more adventures. I wouldn’t be on a flight to Dublin or visiting Copenhagen. I wouldn’t be going to Nashville next month. I wouldn’t have some people who live in Louisiana who I met in Cuba earlier this year staying with me. I wouldn’t have a riot grrl weekend of back-to-back L7 and Bikini Kill shows with high school friends visiting me next month.
I wouldn’t feel the bittersweet feeling of leaving my cats with the excitement of a vacation. I’m also grateful that when it’s time to return home, it’s to my favorite place in the entire world.