Passing the Horror Check

This week has been pretty stressful. It hasn't been all bad, but it's had me preoccupied and made it difficult to retain a lot of things I should have been paying attention to. I'm dimly aware that one friend got a new exciting job, another broke up with someone, and others have had various joys and stresses. I've failed to call a friend I reconnected with, after I said I'd call. I forgot to confirm plans for tomorrow until my friend contacted me, wondering if we were still on. I've barely gotten any work done, I answered almost no email, and any non-essential projects have just been shoved aside. I feel terrible about these things, but at the same time, I was stressed out and useless for a reason.

You may be aware that my fiancé is in the process of emigrating here, and as part of that process, he had to go through a routine medical exam. After he got home, I got a phone call that terrified me more than anything has in recent memory. The x-ray showed that there could be something seriously wrong with him. There were two obvious things to be worried about here, and we each took one. While I was having these horrible visions of his health failing, he was raging at how this is causing delays, meaning we'll have to be on separate continents longer.

The good news is, he's had another visit to a doctor, who has given him a clean bill of health. This is the important thing to focus on. I am now so acutely aware of how much worse things could be right now. The disappointing news is that because the first x-ray turned out to be invalid, he's got to make more appointments and wait, and wait, and wait for things to be processed and submitted and gotten to the right departments at last. We're not sure yet how long a delay we're looking at, but I'm coming to terms with the likelihood that our wedding plans will need to change and it'll be longer that he's so far away.

At the end of the day, though, I can't be too depressed about that. He's okay. He's not sick or injured. I can breathe again, and sleep, and think about things other than how I'll scrape up airfare to get to him and all the various ways our life would turn nightmarish and overwhelming. I'm so relieved that now I'm having a hard time focusing on anything but how relieved I am. Sure, I'm disappointed, and it hurts to think that it could be more weeks or months we'll be apart, but before the disappointment can really set in, I think about how it won't matter in the long run, because he's okay. It was just a false alarm. We won the luck check, too, and instead of having to fight a tentacle monster, we're just delayed in another dimension a little longer before we can get home.

To everyone who gave me bonuses to armor and courage by offering reassurance, distraction, or other kind words, whether they came in the form of a tweet, a Facebook comment, a text, phone call, or instant message, thank you. You helped me stay just this side of functional. There are a lot of really good people out there, who still offer to chat or try to cheer you up, even if they don't know you that well, and that's one hell of a silver lining to a stressful situation.