J and I parted ways this morning. That sounds overly dramatic. This time it’s just for six days. Usually when we say good-bye it’s for three weeks and sometimes even more. You see, I don’t just commute to work each day. I’m in a commuter relationship. Rather, we’re in a commuter relationship. It’s something academics do all the time, one partner lives and teaches in Washington and the other lives and teaches in Ohio. They do it for a variety of reasons: neither partner’s college will hire the other; one partner is at a better institution; both feel that they’ve worked too hard to sacrifice their careers; they’ve been trained to believe – or they actually believe – that fulfillment comes primarily from work. We do it because J has a tenure-track job and I have a post-doc. Supposedly it’s temporary. In any case, there’s nothing new here. Everyone knows this. It’s just the way it is. But it’s lousy when you’re the one living it, as J often says, ‘it feels like we’re each living half of a life.’ It’s true. There’s so little that’s good about being an academic these days, when university budgets are crumbling, tenure is in peril, and adjuncts can’t make a living wage, and I suspect I’m feeling at my wit’s end with a system that right now necessitates that we live 500 miles apart. We can’t even fight in person. It never feels like we have enough time to talk through anything. And so when we do squeeze in time it can feel like a full-frontal attack. I want to race through the ten things that I’m worried about, and I forget that I have a lovely partner who inclines toward a more moderate approach. I talk loudly and quickly and he whispers slowly, especially in the morning. But instead of having time to ramble our way through a discussion about our divergent communication approaches, we rush again to the airport, hoping not to miss the flight this time around. It’s just not a way to live, especially when the rewards are so few and the frustrations are so large. Argh. Double argh.
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