T going away - Spazzing

So I was inspired to write this post after reading zoopa's.

My T is leaving for a trip to Cuba in a week, and I fear that she'll be captured and sold into sex slavery or killed during a mugging gone wrong. I've been indirectly pleading with her not to visit Cuba for a few months now. I've suggested she visit Phoenix, for example. Her reassurances of their supposedly low crime rate does not move me because I know autocratic governments fudge these numbers. I feel that I am at the point of annoying her but hey I've got anxiety issues. I know I am thinking the worst here but it bothers me she is going to a place where she could not rely on the American embassy for help and indeed would be penalized for being there.

I can't make her stay. The entire time she is there, I am going to be a wreck and popping my klonopin like candy. She wants to give me a name of some stand-in while she's gone, but I don't want a replacement! What if she doesn't come back??

I mean, she does know that Cuba has a NEGATIVE net migration, right?? Why can't she go to Aruba or the Virgin Islands?

I sometimes have similar fearful thoughts when my T travels. I have to remember that they are just thoughts, they the thoughts are about my own fears of her going far away from me. It seems the farther she goes the greater the worry. When she went to Europe .. I had worry thoughts about her safety, thoughts that she would fall in love with some place over there and decide to retire and move there.
Strange as it sounds, these kinds of thoughts are ways of staying connected while she is away. I also am able to just simply miss her while she is away without constructing these scenarios that are nothing but my imagination and that frighten me.

chicken wing, I hope you can have some peaceful thoughts of her, miss her while being curious about what she's doing, feeling happy for her that she's vacationing and enjoying her time and at the same time she is still connected to those back home and looks forward to returning when vacation time is over.

I think its our unconcious anger at hem for leaving us that gets expereinced as exagerated fear for their safety.

(((((Chicken wing))))) It isn't easy to have T running all over the place that way.
My T told me last month that next year he will be gone for several weeks with his son out in the wilderness for survival stuff. It can be very hard when T is "out in the world" rather than all nice and safe in that nice safe office they make for us!

The reality though is that things can also happen in the office. ((NOT to get your mind going there!)) But any office - or on the way to the office - or in a grocery store - or in a parking lot. The reality is that surviving life is not always easy and there is danger. But we manage the dangers and move forward. And we grieve when those we love are harmed.

Just allow yourself to feel what you feel. But remember that life has to be lived.

chicken_wing, I have the same fears as you do!!! When my T recently went to a country I didn't think was so safe, I fell apart. I worried every day about her, and missed her more because of my fears. She didn't allow email when she was away, said she may or may not have access to it. It was awful for me!!!

I asked the same question: what if she doesn't come back? I told her my fears and she said "I will come back. I will be safe." But that's not the truth, and I know it. That's why I worry about my kids too. Well, she DID come back, of course, but what about next time?

More often than not, an old T told me, people come back. I guess you just have to trust in a higher power about that.

I'm not much help, but want you to know you're not alone in your fears.