Lovesick

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. I think it’s desperation.

Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, or an unattractive perspective. After all, are we not enough on our own, a whole person without need of another to complete us?

Why then is there this agonising desperation that comes along when someone you’re close to—whether spouse or friend—is missing?

If we are complete, why feel the sting of loss? Why desire? Why need? Why love?

These musings come to me after enduring the absence of my husband for about ten days. He picked up some extra work two weeks ago, but unfortunately things went sideways and what should have been a propsperous gig turned sour quickly. Too quickly. By the time he came home covered in blood on day eight, and an ER trip later—I had had enough.

It was almost intolerable I had to spend so much time without him, but to have him come home in such a state? Unacceptable. It only exasperated my desperation for him to be home, to be with me, more and not have to return and finish the work the following Sunday. But my husband is ever the dutiful, diligent man who keeps his word, even if it costs him. I can’t take that away from him.

Of course, you may be wondering why I was so desperate to have him with me. We are married after all. Don’t we see each other everyday? Don’t we drive each other crazy at this point (the bad way, not the good kind), almost three years later? Don’t we enjoy spending time apart as much as together?

Not really, no. We’re weird like that, I guess. I would have expected the honeymoon phase to end like they warn you about, but then again, I think what we have is stronger than a fleeting magical bliss, as enchanting as it can be.

You see, in Judaism, there is such a thing as soulmates, but not like you’ve been told before. Without breaking down the Hebrew and providing a full exegesis, let me explain.

Before there was Adam and Eve, there was only Man, or Adam Kadmon, but this Man was both Adam and Eve as one being, one human. Hashem had not separated Adam from Eve. When Adam Kadmon had named all the animals and seen there was no other being, no other humans, like him—there was no mate for his own to be found and he felt alone—Hashem cast a deep sleep to fall upon him, and He separated man from woman, Adam from Chava [Eve].

At last he had a mate to call his own.

From this, I like to think that just as He split Adam Kadmon into two physical bodies, Hashem also split his soul into two different wholes. (This is also probably discussed somewhere Talmudically, but I’m too tired to remember if so and where.) That’s why we have soulmates.

Here’s another way to think about it.

If I wanted said to my husband, “I miss you,” in French, I would say, “Tu me manques.”

The only problem is, you can’t say, “I miss you,” in French like we do in English. That’s a mistranslation. Rather, it’s better translated from the French as, “You are missing from me.”

Before I met my husband, before we fell in love, I was…fine. I was sufficient, independent. I didn’t need anyone. I was okay with being alone because I didn’t know I was alone. Sure, I felt lonely, but that’s not necessarily the same thing. It was as if I was asleep because the moment he laughed at that ridiculous scene in LEGO Batman, when he fell out of his chair—I woke up.

Now I know what alone truly means because any extended amount of time I spend away from my husband, it pulls at and tightens that string tied under my ribs. Too much time apart and it frays; it could snap and “I’d take to bleeding inwardly.” It’s in those moments I know I’m alone because he’s missing from me.

I can’t help but think then what Solomon was thinking when he wrote the phrase,