Little holes.

I'm in a hotel room in Huntsville, Alabama. It's dark and chilly outside, and the room is only slightly disturbed by my presence. I've got some purchases spread on the bed and a few pieces of clothing draped over chairs to prevent wrinkling from sitting in the suitcase. All the sundries litter the vanity counter, in my typical disorganized way. A CD is playing to break the silence -- not one of my favorites, I've decided, but for its purpose, it'll do just fine.

The connection here is only wired, so I need to sit a desk that's too high up. I have to take periodic computer breaks so my hands can get some blood again, regain some warmth. I'm wearing the same jacket I've worn the past four days; after several business trips, you learn that kind of unfashionable efficiency.

I've only been gone from home for a few days, but after learning a life that constantly enjoys company, it's an adjustment to go back to this amount of alone time. I struggle to find things to do on this workless weekend. I've done all the Christmas shopping my suitcase will allow; I watched the new James Bond, and I liked it, but so far no one can discuss it with me.

There are different kinds of acquaintances you make while on business travel. You develop a rapport with the bartender, since he's the only person you talk to while sitting at the bar, eating your meal for one. Of course, they're experts in this kind of conversation, those quick and fleeting connections you cling to in the absence of people dear to you. Yes, you start talking too long to almost everyone -- your bartenders, yes, but your waiters, your store clerks, people in line, even the people you've just met at work, trying to feel something with someone.

These are the times you know what it means to miss someone. It's only been a few days, of course, but it's a slight glimpse into that emptiness you feel when you are removed from the person whose company is most valuable to you.

You go from sharing to having everything to yourself, just left to wondering as to what his thoughts would be. You drink your wine, wondering what he'd think of it. You wear an outfit and wonder if he'd like it today. You hear a song, recalling how it's tied to a certain memory you created with him. You do something rather silly and fill in what kind of joke he'd make about it.

These are the nuances of love. Yes, there's the longing to be held and to hold, to feel the person's presence and hear them, to enjoy holding hands and kisses and the smell and skin and silent moments when you take time to just BE. But it's in the small things that you really miss someone. It's those moments when, because of love, because of knowing that person in that intimate way, you feel it profoundly when those mundane moments are gone.

He's not worried about if we need to take separate cars to work or if we can carpool. I'm not getting something for dinner because I'm not there to cook it and because I don't even know what he wants for dinner. He'll handle that himself. He's taking care of himself. We're taking care of ourselves right now.

And as much as it bristles against my independent state of mind (or perhaps just my stubborn nature), that interdependency of love is part of why we crave it. There are things we need from each other. There is a need FOR each other. Love is giving up part of your self-sufficiency, not in a way that's harmful to the soul, but rather, feeds the soul by giving it more than you ever could by yourself.

These are the little holes of the soul, those dark spots that want the other so much, the pinpricks that are tiny and not disabling, but hurt all the same, the smile that isn't as big as it could be and the days that you'd rather hurry through than savor.

Yes, we all want our time to ourselves, and I definitely take that time. But when you're home and when he's home, you can choose when that time ends. Here I have no choice; I am my company, I'm my friend, I'm all I've got. Sometimes, you don't want to be all you've got.

For me it's easy; in a few days I return home and I get to resume (for a while) my life with the one I love. But it's definitely not that easy for many. There are those whose spouses have to be away for much longer, whose loves have made the decision to leave, whose partners in life have departed this world, and for them, this is much more than this small sadness I possess. And from the very partial way that I can relate, I know no words of mine truly help.

I suppose I write this to try to capture the ineffeable; it's what I try to do a lot. The heart is always striving to say something but lacks the capacity, and I try to give it voice as much as possible through my words. Right now, my heart hurts a little bit.

I think it's really just trying to say that it misses you, love.