Sitting in my hotel in Tashkent, working on quarterly reports for three different countries, listening to Bruce Springsteen, wondering if I should give up on the reports and go see Gulnara. Or walk around – enjoy Tashkent while I’m here. I missed this city. It’s a work day, though. I should be working. And I certainly have enough that I should be doing. (The Tajikistan quarterly report, for example, currently consists of a heading that says “Tajikistan Quarterly Report”) On the other hand, I will have plenty of time to work in Ashgabat. Kir’s in Vienna so I’ll have an abundance of evening time to get stuff done.

“come back home to the refinery / hiring man says son if it was up to me…”

I think I left a sweater in Dushanbe. One of the transparent ones, but still. It was new. I am not happy.

It’s time for me to go home. I’ve been traveling long enough. I miss my dog. I miss my husband, too, but since he won’t be there to go home to, I am trying to focus on the dog and sleeping in my own bed. The bed I don’t even like, since the mattress is too hard, but at least it’s mine.

I spent this morning working on my computer in the hotel lobby, tired of this room and not wanting company, either. Working where strangers walked by was an excellent compromise.

“Sometimes it’s like someone took a knife baby edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull…”

Later this afternoon, I will go to see Gulnara one last time. Bring her the baby outfit I bought yesterday at the grocery store. Her mom will be there, so I don’t plan to stay all that long. Just long enough to kiss the baby and show I care. Then I’ll head back here, pack my things, and wait for the car to take me to the airport.

I really think “I’m on Fire” is Bruce Springsteen’s best song. Not so much about sex as about desperation. You have to be impressed by a song so ugly and so beautiful at the same time. Also, it scans really, really well.

Kir told me that he could tell I’d been away too long when he was watching a doctor show on BBC and someone’s wife and new baby died. He said he was near tears, thinking “What if that were Violet? What would I do without her?”

Love’s a funny thing. I do just fine without Kir at first, and then over time it becomes harder and harder to maintain the facade of ordinary me until I am weird and weeping and desperate and wear my life like a mask. I am reaching that point now. My own house will help. The dog will help. Getting to be alone and weep if I so desire will help.

I have no idea how I made it through that first year in Tashkent without him. I didn’t need Kir so much then, I hadn't gotten used to having him yet. I didn’t allow myself need. I am accustomed, now, to needing him and I have lost the trick of stopping. And, of course, Ian and Mike were there that first year in Tashkent, for teary late night phone calls and dinners at the Indian restaurant. Mostly Mike – Ian was back in the US by the time things got really wretched.

“At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet and a freight train running through the middle of my head…”

A friend of mine in college told me that she always knew she was losing it when she found herself listening to ghost by the indigo girls on endless repeat on her CD player.

The Kyrgyzstan quarterly report is now complete. Once down, two to go. I am growing to hate the passive voice, which I used to enjoy.

This is a very bad album to be listening to right now. Very bad. Not in any way helping my peculiar mood. Almost as bad as the time I was listening to “so far away from me” on the train from DC. This is the problem with listening to good music. I never have this problem with my Roxette CD.

“I hope when I get old I don’t sit around thinking about it, but I probably will...time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of glory days…”

Second report done. Only Tajikistan left. And an hour to do it in. No problem. Well, no problem if I stop typing this and actually go do it.

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USAID is one of many donors for the project I work for. The views expressed herein are the author’s own views and do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer or especially those of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. And I mean it. I probably give the US government heart attacks.