Absence Makes The Heart Grow...

I could feel the aching in my legs draining the sleep from my brain. I was pressed with my entire body flat against the wall, taking up a mere six inches of the bed. I forced my sleep caked eyes open and stared at the man consuming the rest of the bed beside me, a dark scowl clasping his face. The TV blasted across the room. Slowly, I let the tension ease out of my body. 

My knee brushed his thigh.

“Stop hogging the bed!” he snapped.

Mr. Excitement isn’t always an easy man to love.

We spend more time apart than together these days. I live in a city three hours away from the one he lives in. He works from dawn until past dusk, sometimes being woken up in the middle of the night to go work on a road call. When he comes home on the weekend it means him arriving at 1 a.m. Saturday morning and leaving again at 10 a.m. Sunday. Most of the time between is spent sleeping. Sometimes I don’t see him at all because he works the whole weekend through.

If I want to spend any time with him I have to drive up to Metropolis and stay at his parents house. He comes to visit when he gets off work and we’ll spend a precious night or two lying side by side in a tiny twin bed, his arm wrapped around my back, his fingers toying with my hair as I listen to the sound of his heart beat. I really cherish those nights.

I always thought that absence was supposed to make the heart grow fonder.
You were supposed to remember all the wonderful things about one another while they were gone and paint this idyllic picture of them in your mind.
When you saw them again you would be so consumed with love that all their faults and flaws would be washed away for another blissful honeymoon period.