The setting:
Andrea goes to Den Haag to stay with fellow Americans, Jessica and Eric, who are returning to the States in 4 days. She gives them small list of things to bring back from home, namely Arby's horsey-sauce, a cheaper-than-here box of bisquick, Mexican Villa hot sauce, and some green enchilada sauce. (they are also going to bring back the other tent) They were also instructed to eat some sausage gravy and biscuits at Bob Evans and Arby's as well as drive around in their cars listening to music and visiting a Wal-Mart supercenter at some strange post-midnight hour.

The journal:
It's the first night we've been apart in over seven months. For a couple that has spent most of their time together rather than apart, this is almost unbearable. Unbearable not in the fact that I just miss her company, that's a given...but I just miss her. Falling into a deep sleep without our sometimes playful, sometimes sexy, sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes intensely special, sometimes dreadfully ordinary banter...that is what I will miss. What I am missing.

I am not going into sleep without the kisses, because before she left for work, she kissed me goodbye. I am not going to sleep without the words, "I love you" ringing in my year because it's been just a few short hours since she called to tell me our plan for tomorrow...and we ended the conversation with Eva's trademark kissing noises, goodbyes, and love yous in the speaker of the phone...

I guess what is missed most, since sleeping entitled unconsciousness, missing hours in a day, I miss her body, the casual half hour on my arm or her shoulder and the pre-sleep turn on our sides. We even manage to wake, at least once a week, undisturbed--our bodies where we left them.

Yes of course I miss her as much as one person can miss another--without the 'another' being dead. But missing her in waking will be soothed by good conversations with close friends and the ever-station-changing television in the corner of their room in the office-building-turned-temporary-apartment-building in the Hague.

Now it is private time. Alone on a face leather couch in a room with one wall of windows--I've locked myself in, the building vast with corridors, stairwells, emptiness.

Contact-less and sleepy I will wake to start a new day, not without her, merely noticing the moments getting nearer to the time we are reunited...a pleasant sensations to be apart, for the reunion is that much sweeter.