The wild and beautiful city

Missing you.

It’s been 49 hours since you and her drove off in the beat up Saviero with the jammed trunk door and broken seat handle.

It’s only been 49 hours. But the memories of what it means to lack you, hacer falta, to live without love in a big city, those thoughts cracked ajar, painted in blue.

……….

We moved to the wild and beautiful Buenos Aires three weeks ago. Our step to fleeing the landscape of a still picture countryside. We laid our heads to rest for the first time on a new mattress atop the aged pinotea flooring of our 5th floor apartment.

The move came too early, but it was for Nina, for her school. And for Us. For our expectations of a wild and beautiful life.

The nearly renovated apartment lacked countertops, a kitchen sink, washing machine, chairs, tables, couches. We moved to the city to go camping.

Work and childcare and no funds and washing every dish and cup and bowl in the bathroom shower had a toll. I couldn’t enjoy the wild city. Take in its beauty.

He knew what I needed. He gave me my first weekend to myself to rest my mind. To cleanse it from the shower-dish-cleaning and bathtub-clothes-washing and continuous thoughts of “Did she eat enough? Is she watching too much TV? Does she have to poo?”

I was gifted my first weekend of being ME again.

……….

What he doesn’t know, and what I didn’t know until 49 hours later is how the memories of loneliness have a funny way of seeping out and down and through it all.

The first 20 hours were splendid. I worked six hours with no interruptions. I cleaned the house while belting and dancing to Beyonce. I strolled through the supermercado. I enjoyed a terrible chick flick. I slept in.

Then I went out.

I found other expat women in a Facebook group. I chatted with women my age living like me in the city. Found an online community where you expect for connections that could be.

But connections are not built in the mind or in a Facebook group. Connection requires physicality, one item touching another. An exchange, a stroking of emotions, of lived experiences. Not just hearing about it during a 1-hour meet up chat as you shove out your life struggles into disorderly word patterns.

I tried to connect. But all it did was unlock the memories of loneliness.

Of missing you.

Of now having you. And now having her.

And how wild and beautiful it will be to take on this crazy city not alone.

But with you. With her.