Sometimes Together. Sometimes Alone.
Written April 29, 2019
Today is the first day of our bike trip. Caitrin and I had hatched the plan to travel across Europe on our bikes last year amidst the darker hours of Caitrin applying to business school. It was a little star of hope winking at us from the depths of GMAT space, reassuring us that there was life outside the business school vacuum. We found bikes boxes together. We established a route we wished to ride together. We created our project, "we are getting there.” We found questions we wanted to ask ourselves and others along our journey. All of this we did together.
Today is the first day of our bike trip and I am alone. Amidst all the planning and thinking of where we were going to go, how we were going to get there, what we wanted to accomplish, I hadn’t stopped to consider the possibility that I might start all of this alone.
Caitrin at the last minute decided to attend an accepted students weekend for an MBA program back in the States. I am joyful that she is off exploring the possibility of joining a new community that will nourish her, drive her to challenge herself, and expand her horizons. Yet, as I pedal down the first couple miles I can’t help but sheepishly acknowledge feeling a certain unease. It felt disconcerting to start something we were supposed to do together alone.
As I continued to turn through these feelings I slowly started to realize that what was so challenging about starting this whole process alone was the uncomfortable parallel in the metaphor of our bike trip as a marriage. How had I not considered the aspects of isolation and being alone? I had spent so much time thinking of marriage in terms of how two people relate to each other, how they adhere to a commitment together, navigate the unknowns together. But I had never given any serious thought about what it might be like to be in a relationship, but somehow feel isolated or alone. A passage from bell hooks’ book All About Love started to resonate deeply in my thoughts. She points out that, “Some of the loneliest hearts in the world will fall asleep tonight next to the person they love.”
So as the end of the first day settles in I find myself asking, At what points in our marriage will I find myself alone? In what ways will we fail to show up for each other, and how may I be courageous enough to rest in my solitude knowing that the larger journey of life is one we will share together? As I fall asleep a text from my father comforts me. He reassures me that my circumstance is indeed “Symbolic of a marriage: Sometimes together. Sometimes alone.”