My Best Friend...

Shawn and I have been together almost 30 years. He jokingly said last night, “I think I’ve been with you longer than I’ve been with myself!”

As I’m preparing for this road trip with my sisters, that is planned to be about a month long, I started to feel anxiety about being away from my family. My husband. My kids (we do Sunday dinner almost every week). My dogs. The anxiety kept building until I had to look it in the face and figure out what my big problem was. In the almost 30 years that Shawn and I have been together, the longest we’ve been apart was 10 days. And we still talked to each other every single day. Out of approximately 10,579 days together the longest stretch apart was 10. Dang!

I imagine for some folks they might look forward to the break. And I’ll be honest, a little break is nice now and then…from anything! But for me a day or two is plenty. Shawn is my best friend. He’s my husband, my springboard, my biggest cheerleader, the person who I trust to go to for advice about life, my art, if these pants make my butt look big…pretty much everything. After 10,000+ days I’ve come to depend on him for so many things in my day to day life. Some might analyze that and question whether it’s healthy or not. All I know is that it works for both of us. We actually like each other as people, trust each other, we have a good time together. We see things the same way (well, for the most part), we enjoy doing a lot of the same things and if there is something one of us enjoys that the other doesn’t we either compromise or go our separate ways for a few hours.

So, can I handle being physically apart from him for that many days? I have an anxiety disorder. Will my anxiety rear its ugly head and cause problems? Will my sisters know how to handle me if my anxiety gets too intense? Will I be able to deal with it? Shawn is my grounding source if I have a major panic attack. Can I have one without being able to physically touch him to help make it stop? I have absolutely no clue at all.

I do know that Shawn, while also sad and stressed that I’ll be away for so long, is fully supporting that I take this trip. It really is a once in a lifetime adventure for a gal like me. He is concerned about how well he’ll be able to handle the business alone for that long. I’m only a phone call away, I say. We reassure each other whenever one of us gets slammed with the reality of what I’m about to do…in just over 2 weeks from now! What a beautiful trip it will be! I so wish I could do it with him.

I haven’t booked my return flight home yet. It somehow eases my stress to know that I can come back home sooner if I need to. My best friend, Shawn, suggested that to me. He really knows me very well. He always has my back.