Quirky "My Husband Just Left" Behaviors

It's been roughly two and a half weeks since I watched my hubby get on a plane, leaving me to stand and watch from the window as his plane pulled away from the gate and took off to carry him thousands of miles away from me.  I apologize if this sounds melodramatic; my inner novelist likes to escape.  The first week was tough and I found myself engaging in what I like to call quirky "my husband just left" behaviors.  I found myself staying up to all hours of the night just to avoid going to bed alone and waking up on my husband's side of the bed snuggling with his pillow.  I was avoiding making dinners that my husband really enjoys and even felt guilty watching TV shows that we normally watch together knowing that he wouldn't be able to watch them too. 

At the risk of sounding pathetic I will even admit to leaving his dirty laundry on the floor of our bedroom.  Normally, my husband leaves his clothes on the floor and I have to ask (sometimes repeatedly) for him to please put it into the basket in the laundry room.  Sometimes I end up picking them up myself.  As usual on deployment morning hubby left some dirty clothes on the floor by the bed.  However this time I couldn't bring myself to pick them up.  It was as if by leaving the clothes on the floor it seemed somehow possible that my hubby might eventually show up to put them away.  I also resisted taking his bath towel down from the rack to wash and put away.  It felt as though these small cleaning gestures were in fact erasing the evidence that my husband had ever been in our home.  Most of his clothes are missing and many of his things since he took them with him.  I felt like his dirty clothes and towels were all I had left.

Now, after two and a half weeks I can proudly say that I have finally picked the laundry up off the floor but I am still struggling with the feeling of "erasing evidence of my husband" in our home.  I am taking one day at a time and I know that it WILL get easier.