alone

My maiden voyage to Southeast Asia did not get off to the smoothest start. In fact, it has not yet started. After an intermittently fun, stressful, and strange Christmas Eve/Day/Boxing Day, I got to the airport around 9:45 last night to check in for my flight. The computer system had crashed so they were checking everyone in by hand. This means that everyone's boarding pass last night was literally handwritten in pen on a blank Thai Airways ticket, and that luggage was tagged by hand as well. Around 12:30 AM, an hour after our scheduled departure, we boarded. And sat. And sat. I mostly tried, occasionally successfully, to sleep. At about 3 the cabin crew gave a little cheer and announced that the mechanical problem that had kept us on the ground was fixed. Thirty minutes later -- three hours after we'd boarded -- the pilot came on the intercom to announce that we would have to deplane and try again tomorrow.

Pakistan is not the most organized country. Going back through immigration was fine, but then there were just two guys making arrangements with all 300 passengers to either stay in a hotel or write down a phone number to be reached at tomorrow when the plane was ready to fly. I wanted to go home, so I pushed my near the front of the scrum and gave the guy my number. Arrived back at my place at 4:30 and passed out, but not before making sure the ringer was on. 

Woke up at 10:30 or so and texted SRB that I had not yet managed to skip town. She invited me to hang out with her until her flight out, to Bahrain. She's going to visit her ex-boyfriend, with whom she moved to Bahrain earlier this year before seeing a vision of her future with him and deciding to get out. They'd really only just broken up when we met in October; she moved back here a little before I arrived. We talked about this trip last week and about the status of our relationship with each other. No conclusion reached, except that neither of us particularly wants to be in a relationship but both of us really like each other and spending time together. Her going to visit her ex is her business, and I'm about to be a solo traveler. But, as I told her, I like her well enough to be a little jealous already, and that feels disorienting and weird. What am I doing allowing myself to become invested emotionally in a person I just met and whose future in the place I've just adopted as my home for the next two years is unclear beyond the next five months? There's a real chance she'll just have to leave for visa reasons in April or May or something. 

We'd continued that conversation last night, and it's intense and confusing for both of us, I think, to be in this position. We're both certainly freaked out that we spend so much time together, a fact compounded recently by being among the few people in our circles left in town for Christmas. 

Feeling grumpy and tired and weird about the idea of sitting with her for an hour and a half while she waited to visit her ex, I declined her invitation and wished her a smooth trip. And then I went to the bank to pay my electrical bill, which came today and which I have the opportunity to pay on time only because my flight was cancelled last night. It was in this state of mind that I scrolled through Facebook at the bank while waiting for my number to be called. And came across a picture of CZ with her arm around an old peripheral friend in DC. I unfollowed her right after we broke up so this was from his timeline. Not the best moment to discover that she is dating a person I knew and liked. 

It hit me all at once how alone I am. Talking to the fam on Christmas Day was great, and we should all offer thanks at the altar of Skype and high-speed internet, but I miss them a lot and I missed being home (well, in CT) a lot on Christmas Day in particular. My closest friend here is someone I'm also becoming romantically involved with, and she's on her way to visit her ex. There is no one in second place with whom I could speak. And the last woman I was in love with, with whom I harbored admittedly dwindling dreams of getting back together at some nebulous point in the future, is smiling into the camera at someone else's Christmas, with someone else's arm around her waist.

TLDR: I feel really lonely right now.