This morning is the second consecutive morning that I've been up well before noon. However, while yesterday's early rising was for something completely nostalgic and indulgent, today I woke up at 7:00 after having fitfully fallen asleep two and a half hours prior, thinking that my boyfriend was dead, missing, or a combination of both.

We'd spoken in the afternoon briefly and, having not really had a decent phone conversation since last weekend, I told him I would call him that night. I spent the evening making dinner, chatting with my parents, and finishing up my story for my writing club, so texted him around 10:00 to let him know I would call soon.

I didn't receive a text back, but figured he was waiting for my call. So I finished my story around 10:45 and called him, to no answer. Thinking he might be out somewhere, I settled in to my next disc of Bones and waited for him to call back. After every episode, I called again to no answer. This is pretty atypical and has only happened once before, when he accidentally left his phone at home. I figured he would come home eventually and call back, no matter how late it was.

I finished watching Bones at around 2:00 and was starting to worry. He's been out late before and far be it for me to bemoan this, but the anxiety had already set in. What was he doing? Hadn't he thought that I might be trying to call? He gets worried if he calls and I don't respond in a reasonable timeframe. Wouldn't he assume the same of me?

I called again and left a message asking him to call me so that I knew he wasn't dead, then tried to go to sleep. As soon as my head hit the pillow, though, my mind began to race through various scenarios of what might have happened to him. Maybe he was hurt somewhere. Maybe he was drunk (unlikely, but him not calling me back for four hours is also unlikely). Maybe he had gone traipsing in the woods and gotten lost in the dark. Maybe coyotes had gotten to him. Maybe he'd been in a horrible car accident and was laying somewhere, dying or already dead.

Needless to say, I did not fall asleep. I went back downstairs and turned on the television to distract me. By now I was calling him every half hour, more in an attempt to do the only thing I could, because the likelihood that he would have missed the previous multiple calls, yet pick up the latest, was pretty slim. I contemplated driving up to New Hampshire, though I was unsure what I would do once I got there if he were in fact missing. And if he was hurt and in the hospital, surely his mother would have called me.

At 4:00 I relinquished the television plan and headed back up to my room to attempt, again, to sleep. I called him again and left a third message, telling him that he needed to call me now. Back in bed, I started to think that if I didn't hear from him by morning I would call his house. I hadn't wanted to call in the middle of the night and worry anyone else, but if he was still unaccounted for by morning I felt that it might be cause for alarm - and calling at 8:00 goes down a bit smoother than calling at 4:00. I imagined that if I called his mother and he wasn't in his room, that I might call in at work and really head up there to search for him. Or sit by his bedside at the hospital. Or punch him in the face for doing this to me.

I fell asleep at around 4:30 clutching my phone and dreamed about search parties and dead bodies and skeletons (thanks, Bones) until my alarm went off at 7:00. The instant I realized that my hand was still wrapped around my phone, I remembered the state in which I had fallen asleep. I called him again - nothing. It was too early to call his house, I thought, so I tried to go back to sleep, already sensing that it was in vain. I started to imagine how the rest of my plans for this year would pan out if he were gone, no longer a part of them. I wasn't sure what I would do - where I would go - how my plans would change, if at all. Fifteen minutes later I knew I had to get up, do something until at least 8:00 when I would call his house.

So I left. I wrote a note to my parents so they wouldn't freak out when they woke up and I was gone, telling them simply that Brian was missing, I was having severe anxiety and thus had to leave the house. I drove mindlessly with only half my brain, returned a DVD at Blockbuster, wondered where else I could go at 7:30 in the morning. Starbucks. A jolt of caffeine might relieve my tense exhaustion.

At 8:00 I called him again - no answer, as expected. Then I dialed his house with trepidation. What would I say, or do, if they went into his room and he wasn't there? Would I cry to his mom? His dad? Would I explain to my parents that I was leaving right now for New Hampshire to look for my missing and possibly dead boyfriend? Could I really do that? What would I do if something terrible had really happened? What kind of reality would I find? Worse, what if no one picked up at the house? What could I do then?

His dad answered and I instinctively asked for his mom. She wasn't home, his dad said - away at a bowling event. 'Oh... do you know if Brian is home?' He went down to find him, and I waited in dread. I heard two voices, and as quickly as relief rushed through me, a lump rose in my throat. Then, Brian.

'Hello?'
'Hi... are you okay?'
'Yeah...'
'I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!!!'

Then the tears. The fact that I was sitting outside a tiny, already busy Starbucks barely fazed me. I set my glasses on the table next to me, covered my face and wept. He had been home the entire night, having fallen asleep at around 10:30. His phone? In his truck. Had he been expecting my call? Yes, but he never heard the phone ring and then he'd fallen asleep. Later on, after the emotional outpouring and the apologies, he told me that he had dreamed about me.

My parents beeped through - they'd gotten my note. I told them that everything was fine now, and the relief in my mother's voice soothed me... somehow, the fact that she was so concerned about his well-being was just the note of comfort I needed, and the empathy that my parents had about my need to leave the house - something that they've never particularly understood - spoke to me. After we hung up, I talked to Brian for another hour before heading home.

I'm still trying to make sense of my emotions here, and figure out what this all means to me, besides the fact that I obviously have anxiety issues, and that the long distance thing is wearing the hell out of me. I hate that the only immediate contact I have with him is a phone, that he may or may not have with him, and that if something had happened there would have been at least a five hour drive between me and being there with him or his family. I have a four hour shift at work today and part of me considered still calling in sick, but I'm not sure that having more idle time would be good for me, and having publicized this on my blog I can't very well call in with a lie anyway. Ha.

More thoughts to follow... maybe.