the adventures of eric in scotland

I was hanging out with Ballal and Iain at my flat tonight when Luke called. Rosie answered and said it was for me, but I wasn’t expecting anything international or anything. It’s always nice to know someone on the other side of the planet was thinking of me.

Luke is in Seattle at the moment, visiting his family and mine. He’s been hanging out with David and they also spent some time at my parents’ house. Even more surreal, David had the opportunity to meet some of Luke’s siblings! That’s just the weirdest thing to me. There are some serious worlds colliding here. What’s going to happen when the Rogge and Wanagel family trees meet properly for the first time? Will the laws of physics still apply?

Anyway, that’s not the point. Luke was just telling me about all this fun he’d been having, talking about people and places I miss, and I totally felt like throwing up. I really wanted to be like, “Yeah! Cool! That sounds like fun! Wish I could have been there! You kids don’t have too much fun without me!” I tried saying those things but eventually I couldn’t say anything because my stomach had turned upside down. (Not literally, of course. Otherwise this entry would have been titled, “Surgery I had today.”)

It wasn’t jealousy that they were having fun without me. It was weirder than that -- I was hurt they were even existing without me. It hurt not to be there with them, I missed them so much. The thing is, a lot of the time the only way to wrap my mind around this year is to convince myself the rest of my life is on hold until I get back. Like it’s a film I spent 21 years watching, and paused so I could go to Scotland and make a sandwich. I think you know what I mean.

It just reminded me that everyone I know still exists and I realized that everyone must be so used to me being gone -- just like I got used to being away from them. But that’s starting to change, as I close in on my departure date and I’m torn between feelings of “hurry up!” and “slow down!” I miss my family, I miss Seattle, I miss UW, I miss sunlight that isn’t accompanied by hailstones. I miss Luke. I miss Luke so much I heard his voice and wanted to barf.

When we get married, I’m going to put that in my wedding vows.