In sickness and in health

I'm back. Have been for a couple of days now. Been mulling over the weekend while coughing my lungs out. Somehow I've managed to both burn myself in the Swedish sun and catch a bronchitis from the hotel's air-condition system. I feel soooo rotten. And if possible, look even worse. My head hurts as do my eyes, chest and muscles I never even knew I had. Hell, even my fingers ache! Ok, enough with the epicrisis and more about the relationship crisis.

The hotel was nice. I've come to realize there are those who first date well. And then there are those who job interview well. Then there are those who hotel breakfast well. That's my lot. I LOVE hotel breakfasts. 

I appreciate you probably don't want to hear about the breakfasts either. It's just... I don't know what to say. Somehow I feel... strangely protective over The Man and feel I need to choose my words very carefully. After all, you've all spent the past days trying to come up with the right way of saying "told you so", haven't you?

The trip started out well. There was the banter, the verbal sparring we do so well. Everything was... nice and easy. I felt very cautious though and had built a wall around me that effectively thwarted his attempts to actually communicate and establish the future course of the relationship.

He'd look at me, with this never-before-seen hopeful vulnerability in his eyes and open up. I'd kill the moment by bluntly blurting out something not quite as romantic. Like this:

The Man: "Why is it that I still want to be with him 20 years from now, pushing my wheelchair?"
Me:"Oh, you mean off a cliff and into the sea?" 
The Man: "Well... I'd rather you didn't..."
Me: "Oh, don't worry. I wouldn't harm the wheelchair- I'd flog it on eBay!"

It was strange. On the other hand  it was like we'd never been apart all these months and on the other... I couldn't quite allow myself to be myself again. It's always taken me a while to get back into normal after we're reunited and time is something we've never had enough. Sure enough by the time I finally stopped panicking and started feeling normal it was time for me to fly back home. But not before we had one of those days that are perfect to a point of stupidity.

We took a boat and sailed through the Swedish archipelago before getting off at a place that can only be described as the Scandinavian summer paradise. Colourful wooden houses straight out of storybook surrounded by leafy little gardens bushing over picket fence next to cobbled streets leading to the piers where they keep their boats... The sun was shining and if you looked really hard, you could actually see the pink unicorns leaping through rainbow-coloured clouds. Blissful. We found this gorgeous Italian deli where we picked our lunch and a couple of bottles of rosé and settled for a picnic by the sea. 

And we talked. And wished the day would never end. Which it did. All too soon.

I didn't want to leave, but I had a plane (and a bronchitis) to catch. I cried all the way to the airport. None of that sophisticated sniffling for me but the good old "Noah, get those animals ready and build that boat- there's another flood coming up"-sort of an episode.

And then he called. "Of course I want to do that with you" he said. "In sickness and in health, for richer and poorer- of course I want to be with you!"

And with that... The Stockholm Syndrome acquired its latest victim.