Traveling solo

It’s raining as I sit here looking out the window at the Brisbane terminal. I’m on my way to Melbourne to visit family and friends.  Its been a while.  COVID put a stop to our ordinary connections, our ability to decide to go visit and catch up, to see an exhibition, to join friends or family for a celebration. We stayed home. Alone. But now finally, we get to travel once more and pick up on our long-ago connections.

Ironically, its raining in Brisbane while Melbourne basks in warm sunshine. For a while. You never know what’s really going to happen in Melbourne, weather wise.

I’m travelling with my little companion, although not quite.  Mia, my little Iggy is flying in style in another section of the plane.  I use the term “style” ironically.  She’s in a plastic travel crate which she can’t stand up in, confined and on her own.  This for a dog who shadow me wherever I go is going to be traumatic. She rarely leaves my side – she lies on her fluffy mat upstairs in my study, if I go downstairs to get something, she comes down too and then follows me back up again.  If I’m downstairs at the dining-table she lies on her mat near-by.  If I’m on the sofa, she’s right there next to me.  At night (and often I suspect when I am out) she’s there at the foot of the bed, lying on the throw.  So for her, my trusty companion, its not going to be the exciting or stressless journey that I’m undertaking.

The strange thing about this journey is that although I am flying solo, as I have done many times in the past, I have left solo and I shall return solo.  There is no-one to see me off, to help me gather myself and my bits and pieces (or to hurry me along) and there is no-one to greet me on my return.  There will be no-one to present me with a drink orglass of wine and a well-considered meal, let alone a much-needed hug and the smile of joy on seeing me. There is no-one to report back to, to miss and say hello in the way you do when you travel away from your partner.  This time it’s just Mia and me. It feels strange and I don’t feel the same level of excitement and enjoyment that I used to in the past. It just reminds me that now, its just me.

Its very strange to be “just me”. I haven’t yet worked out what that means. Apart form the loneliness that seems to track me like a shadow, and the realisation that spontaneous holidays – “Hey, why don’t we go to…?” are no longer a possibility.  Holidays solo are not something I have mastered and wonder if I ever will. It just seems like I’d be trading one environment for another.  Part of the pleasure of holidays is the experience of discovering new things, sharing adventures, food, sights, moments, delights. Ach weill. Such it is.

For now, I do have landing to look forward to and being met by family and friends in various locations. I shall be grateful for their love and companionship but I shall be also aware of me new solo existence, where once-upon-a -time I was either on my own away from my partner or there together with him, I was somehow defined by that. In some ways this trip represents my first ever solo journey and an opportunity to discover who I am – and how I am – solo.