Heartbreak

1.11.14

I think all my transitioning has taught me to cling to a calling and not a country, a promise and not a place. So I don't often allow my mind to wander to thoughts of tearful goodbyes. Until something prompts it.

Before youth meeting, Kayla and I were talking to Cleopas. He is a CBU student, a hilarious guy that we don't get to spend nearly enough time with. As we were talking, the topic of travel came up. 

"You guys are going back to the US in October?" he asked.

"Yes," we responded casually. It is no secret when we are leaving; we talk about it openly with the students.

"For how long?" he asked.

Neither Kayla nor I could speak. We were stunned. We thought we had been careful to let everyone know that October was the end of our term. Permanently.

We didn't know what to say. But the silence spoke for us.

Cleopas' grin faded. "Oh. I see," he said quietly. 

Those words stabbed my heart as few things have since coming here. I couldn't shake them off, and they came back to me the next day.

I was sitting in church. Wezious squirmed in my lap, never still for a moment, her scratchy cornrow braids on my chest, back and forth. Her warm breath on my neck. 

She grabs my hand to hold hers and help her trace, because last week I showed her how to write her name. She turns around and flashes a grin at me, whispering much too loud in my ear, "That says Wezious!!" 

I nod and blink back tears. 

She doesn't know.

She doesn't know that Auntie Alyssa won't always live in the big house next door, that we won't always swing in the hammock together, that she won't always be able to fall asleep and snore in my lap every Sunday in church. There is no way for me to communicate that to her, and I'm not sure I would if I could. Her face would look too much like Cleopas' did yesterday. 

Heartbreak.

It's not a word I use too often here, nor an emotion I feel too often. But today I felt it.