Alone

Tonight, for the second time in the history of my marriage, I spend the night alone. In about an hour, Tim's flight to Texas will leave, and while he's busy training for his fancy new internship, I'll be spending three more days with people I don't know, in a town I've seen twice before, in a state I've never lived in, completely alone.

Tim's aunt and uncle are nice, good people. I won't go without food and shelter. It's just that I'm suddenly realizing that I don't feel comfortable asking for anything from these people to whom I must be nothing but an occupied room. It doesn't help that this morning I woke up ill—unable to see my hubby off at the "light rail" station—and feel like a total slob holed up in this little room wearing yesterday's sweatpants.

At least tomorrow I get to move into our new apartment—if I can find it. I suppose I'll figure it out in the end, and somehow I'll lug the ridiculously heavy bags and boxes that fill the entire back of the car into a new strange place, where I can at least be alone in my aloneness.

I can't help but think how much more I would like to be alone in Europe. I just graduated from college. Shouldn't I now be backpacking through France, using my 200-level, half-forgotten vocabulary to find the Louvre? I feel like I've made a good choice in a choose-your-own-adventure book, but now none of the options take me to the Tower of London.

Where to next? The more I think about it, the more I feel far too young and immature to have children. Hormones and the "everyone's doing it" mentality really do a number on a 22-year-old girl who's lived in Provo far too long. I see my friends getting pregnant (no, not the act itself, you dolt) and something in me cries out for receiving blankets and nursery furniture of my own, as realistic as I am about the not-so-charming reality of raising children.

I'm left to waste away my best childbearing years working. As a writer. AH! The phone.