Diving Back In

If you know me in real-life or have read more than one sentence of this blog, you will have already realized that I put the ART in Worry-Wart with my amazing ability to conjure up mental demons. I have always been this way. As a young child I would give myself stress ulcers by laying in bed at night worrying that my house might burn down while I slept. I chalk it up to having been cursed blessed with an over-active imagination. Unfortunately it has always been a dark imagination, it never imagines sunshine and smiles but instead takes me to straight to the worst possible outcome of any situation. Tell me that the lottery ticket I'm holding is a winning one and, instead of celebrating, I'll wait for a gust of wind to rip it out of my hand and throw it down a sewage drain. I wouldn't say I'm negative exactly, I'm just overly-prepared for disaster.

While this mental set-up might be helpful if I was the Managing Director of the Red Cross...it is not exactly a calm, cool place to reside when you're setting off to further romantically entangle yourself in a foreign country. To say I was stressed by the time I got on the plane is an understatement. My head, neck and shoulders had fused together into a solid block of pain, I couldn't feel my hands, I could over-feel my teeth, I hadn't slept for two nights, I wanted to barf. Oh love, what an amazing feeling!

I ended up sitting next to a young, heavily-tattooed couple from Windsor on the plane and the subsequent hour and half bus ride to the actual resort town. They helped distract me from my nervousness a little bit with their questions about which restaurants to eat at, which excursions to take and which to avoid, the nightlife of the area, the towel policy of this particular establishment - can you get a new one every day? what are towel-returning hours? how much do they charge if you lose it? do you leave it in your room at the end or return it to the Lord of the Towels? This is not a topic you want to tread lightly on, towels are serious business in Cuban resorts.

With all the talk about beach towels we didn't even have time to discuss towel art

 By the time we reached the first resort of the area I was feeling a little more relaxed thanks to the conversation and the Cristals I'd bought at the airport. Peeking through the throbbing pain of my head/neck/shoulders and the sour aching in my stomach was a feeling I hadn't let surface in a while - excitement. After 4 months of spotty communication and misunderstanding, longing mixed with sadness, tenderness mixed with fear, I was about to see Juan again, for real! With that thought, the beer hit my bladder.

We pulled up to our resort around midnight to the sound of bongos and singing. I ran off the bus and straight to Juan. We smiled like idiots at each other for a couple seconds, he handed me a flower and we hugged (chastely as his boss was standing right beside us). Before he could say a word, I blurted out 'I HAVE TO PEE SO BAD!!!' and started running for the lobby bathroom.

And they say romance is dead!