Anxiety, Pouty of One?

My mom was in town for the last two weeks (God Bless her!) to play nurse while I recovered from my gutting. (OUCH!)

For 24 hours straight, and 12 straight days, mom and I were together. That’s a lot of time to spend with someone, let alone one’s mother whose primary role on earth, I’m convinced, is to be their children’s button-pusher. HA!

While I’m grateful she brought me into this world, I was surprised that she didn’t take me back out by the time our  L – O – N – G  days and nights together were over.

And I’ll be honest, I had been anticipating moms departure for a few days. To the point that I got her all checked into for her flight back to California at the earliest possible moment. I was ready for her to leave. And not in a mean way, but in the “I can’t wait to sleep in my own bed and have my place to myself” kind of way.

When the time finally came, I dropped my sweet mom off at the airport, seeing to it that she found her way to the ticket counter and got her bags checked in properly. Before I left, I gave her a tight hug and thanked her profusely for sacrificing SO much of her own life and routine to be at my beckon call — to basically watch me sleep for two weeks. YAWN.

“Bye mom, I love you!” I waved, almost skipping as I headed back to my car.

I had driven half-way around the airport’s exit loop when it happened…

I started to cry!

I had been so eager to see her off, but now that she was actually gone?… Well, it was all I could do not to swing back around the loop to retrieve her.

UGH! I hate this about myself!

I’m pretty sure I developed my slight case of separation anxiety as a result of having shared a womb with someone for nearly nine months before we were yanked from our shared space.  After all, those were formative times, literally.  When one is born with someone by their side, it kind of suggests that will always be the case.

Now, whenever I have to say goodbye to people I love, or situations I’ve grown accustomed, it’s difficult for me. Not to the point that I need medication (HA! I wish!), but to the point that the thought has crossed my mind. At the very least, its crossed my Google browser. Heehe.

It makes it hard to believe that I’ve been in a long-distance relationship for the last two years, right? The only thing that makes it palpable is knowing that we have plans in the near-future and it won’t be long before I see my boyfriend again.

But in those times that life is uncertain and we don’t know when our calendars will line up again, you better believe my mind takes a few loops around the idea of goodbye, and I’m either holding back tears or, at the very least, tossing back a box of wine through a straw.

Truth is, I’ve always been this way. My anxiety never lasts longer than a few hours, but in those initial hours of separation, uncertainty and goodbye, I have to remind myself that I absolutely love my “me time” and that this is just a foolish side effect of having entered the world with a companion and having spent most of my time since that day, without one.

Anyone else experience this?