Argh

Ok, maybe I won't repurpose this blog into a snarky hip commentary on the life of a single woman. Maybe I'll just wail about my lot instead.

There is something deeply fucked up about the fact that the single guys are merely 'alright', but he married ones get me all hot and bothered. Especially after I promised myself I wouldn't.

Repeat after me: It's not worth it. It's not worth it. It's not worth it.

Feck.

It ended

Whilst you all weren't looking, it ended. I have been writing to this blog, but not publishing to it, because I just felt too damn vulnerable. Now it's all over. He has gone his way, I have gone mine, and this blog is going to be repurposed.

Instead of a heartfelt relationship-stress coping mechanism, this blog will henceforth document the search for a new man.

Maybe.

Or I might just get snarky about them. We'll have to wait and see.

Eeeaaaarrrrrgghhhhhh

Long time, no see. Made worse by me being away and him being away and then me going away again this weekend. I'm used to hours and hours of contact each day, and now I'm lucky to get maybe a few moments and some days there is no contact at all. It's killing me, I hate it. It's awful to be this far apart for this long. It's been four and a half weeks since I saw him last, and it's far, far too long for me.

Maybe the whole situation is exacerbated by the fact that the last few weeks have been very busy and stressful for both of us, for different reasons, so I've wound up feeling very needy and clingy. I don't like feeling needy and clingy - that's not what I'm usually like. Usually I'm independent and self-reliant, but I find myself feeling quite the opposite at the moment. I wait for the smallest word from him, and I worry that maybe my feelings exceed his. I've no reason for this, no hints or clues or anything. No basis at all. It's just paranoia brought on by limerance.

Of course, the moment he does come online, all my fears evaporate. I'm smiling again, happy, able to deal with anything and everything. All is right with the world.

*sigh*

I got it bad, eh?

Found

I see from my counter that I've been found. Hm. Odd feeling. I mean yes, don't publish a blog you don't want people to read, but still... feels odd to have anyone visiting here. Luckily, the vast majority of people are visiting for less than 5 seconds - that's just enough time to look at the content and go 'oh, what self-indulgent crap' and leave.

That's good. This is supposed to be self-indulgent. Anonymous therapy. Getting all my feelings out before they start to fester. Do I care if I have no readers? No. Not at all.

V-day today. I sent a card but, from his reaction on IM, I'm guessing he didn't. For some reason, it doesn't bother me. I feel like it should bother me, but it doesn't. I've always said that V-day is blown out of all proportion, just like Mother's Day, so I guess it would be rather hypocritical of me to change my mind now and start thinking it's in any way important, just because my circumstances have changed.

I am peeved that vidchat is conspiring against us today and not working, though. Pfft.

Co-presence

Me and the boyf spend some time this evening on vidchat, watching TV together. I had the DVD of one of our favourite TV shows playing synced to the sound of it playing through vidchat. It was kinda cool, hearing the sound through my headset with all the dropouts and fuzziness and other background noise that that entails, whilst watching the DVD in all it's crisp clearness, and seeing on vidchat his smiles and laughter. Lovely.

That's one of the wonderful things about vidchat - it lets us just hang out. No need to have a big, meaningful conversation (although sometimes we do), no need to type anything (although sometimes we do). We can just sit and chill and do whatever and yet, when I glance up, there he is. It's as close to being in the same room as one can get when there's several thousand miles in the way.

Us being able to do this in my evening is very unusual because for various reasons the software we use doesn't work all the time. Usually we chat first thing in my morning. Sometimes the software stays online til mid-afternoon so I can watch him sleep, which is just the most adorable thing - a big jumble of duvet with the occasional foot protruding.

I am pretty sure that things would be much harder for the boyf and me without vidchat. Getting the chance to soak up all that body language, not to mention the opportunity to drool over him, does me the world of good.

Mmmm vidchat

Double treat this morning. Yesterday's absence prompted two lovely dreams about my boyfriend last night. It's not the same as actually being there with him, but for a short while at least it seemed as if I was. My dreams are usually very vivid and realistic, and these were no exception. I woke up feeling happy and that mood was only slightly dented by realising that they were dreams and not reality.

All was restored, though, but a brief vidchat before the other half took to his bed. Hopefully the vid link will stay on until he wakes up again in about six hours time, but we never can tell. The internet is a fickle mistress.

Incommunicado not good

Haven't seen the boyfriend online all day. Rather, I see that he is online but he's not active, and hasn't responded to any of my pings, which makes me sad. See, this is what I meant. I know he's probably busying doing essential stuff and that I understand, but I hate not at least having a brief chat so that I know he's not going to be around. As it is, I sit and wait, and curse myself for waiting because that's just crap behaviour. Maybe he'll pop on before I go to sleep. If not, I think it will be the first day in two and a half months that we haven't exchanged even a few words.

Conflation

Some good news. The boyfriend got the job he'd applied for! Yay! This means two things - he has to move right across the country before the end of the month, and finally we will have a place to be together that's not a hotel or someone's front room. It's very exciting. The next few weeks are going to be really hard, I think, and not just on him. Whilst he's busy getting everything packed, finding somewhere to live, finding a car to buy and driving down there, I am going to be sitting here, getting stressed because I am broke and wondering when I am going to be able to see him next.

We vidchatted the other day for the first time in ages, and it was so wonderful to see him again, to hear his voice, see his smile. It's a given that I miss him, but I do.

Had an Ikea catalogue through the door today. Only one of their slim, give-away jobbies, but still. I quite like Ikea style even if I don't like the shoddiness with which some of their stuff is made, or with 'bulk-buy' feeling I get from it sometimes. But flicking through it, my nesting instincts are awakened and for the first time in my life I am thinking not 'it'll never happen', but 'maybe one day soon'.

My head is full of wondering what it'll be like to go and stay with him in his new place, in territory that, whilst is mainly his is at least partly ours. It's exciting: a glimpse into the life I'd like to lead with him and a step towards making that become reality. Of course, I still have to earn some decent money and find some clients over there, but it will all come together. I will make sure it does.

Too tired

It gets worse when I get tired. All my emotions get more pronounced, exaggerated. I miss him like he is a part of me. An arm, or an eye, maybe. I go to reach for him, but he's not there. I want to kiss him but all I can do is type *kiss* as if that could somehow, magically allow me to feel the touch of his lips against mine. I want to wrap my arms around him, hold him close, rest my head upon his shoulder and breathe in the scent of him, but all I can do is try to remember as sharply as I can how it felt the last time I did that.

I don't know when I will see him again. So much depends. So much seems out of my control at the moment. Out of his, too. We are like two tiny paper boats set to floating down the same river. Sometimes we wash up for a second on the same beach, mostly we can only watch each other helplessly as we both float towards what we hope is the same destination. The rocks don't scare me. What scares me is that we might end up stranded on different beaches or be completely washed out to sea.

My patience wears thin. I want to see him, and I want to see him now.

The trouble is, when it gets so intense, when I hurt this much, it makes it so much harder not to repeatedly tell him that I miss him, that I want to be with him, that I love him. Instead I sublimate that need into *kisses* and *nuzzles* and *hugs* and I hope that somehow through that faux physical contact I can communicate my feelings, let him know how much he means to me.

I'd rather just show him.

Limerance

That intense, hormonal period of falling in love where the real world recedes into the background and all you can think of is being with your honey. That's limerance. It's said to last six weeks, after which point you start to realise that your honey actually picks his nose, chews his toenails, farts and generally isn't so perfect after all.

Six weeks.

I'd say we've been in a state of limerance for at least 10 weeks, extended by the fact that we mainly interact online. In terms of face-to-face time, that racks up at about eight days, which is so severely not enough. But we do spend a lot of time vidchatting so that has to count for something.

In fact, I think there has hardly been a day gone by in the last 10 weeks when he and I haven't talked through one medium or another. We might not spend as much time physically together as other couples do, but we spend more time in contact with each other than if, say, we met up once a week down the pub on a Friday night. In fact, compared to a new couple who see each other once a week, we are only a couple of days behind.

The weird thing is that we're right at the beginning, really, yet everyone keeps asking me if I am going to move to be with him. They almost assume that I am, and that makes it awkward - particularly if they are grilling me in front of him. Of course I want to move, of course I want to be with him, but it's sort of hard to discuss it with other people when we haven't discussed it between ourselves yet. We have so much else to sort out before that - like jobs. Maybe when he has moved and got a job and maybe when I have a more stable income and maybe when I've been over and spent some more time with him I can think about how I might be able to go over permanently. But money is a problem. Visas are a problem. It's not so simple as up and move and suddenly everything will be perfect.

Although I have to admit, it is what I want right now. I want to just get on a plane right now, just run away. But I know I can't do that. Mainly cos my credit card is maxed out and I can't afford the airfare.

Patience, grasshopper. Patience.

Oooh excited

The prospect of seeing my honey soon is a bittersweet agony. On the one hand, it's not going to be long before we're together again, and I can imagine so clearly just how it's going to be... all the kissing and nuzzling and hugging. On the other hand, I can imagine it all just a bit too clearly. It's a form of water torture. I can almost, just, nearly feel the brush of his lips on my skin as he kisses my throat. Nearly. But not quite.

I think that quite a few people that I know really don't get the whole online relationship thing. They wonder how we could possibly truly know each other. How can we possibly have fallen in love from such a distance? Sometimes I wonder that, but then I see him on vidchat and that doubt, which is never more than a scrap, evaporates. Truth is, I don't know how I know, I just know. I knew before we'd even met.

If you were being cynical you could say it's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. By expecting to fall in love one falls in love, but there's more to it than that. Expecting love has never guaranteed its presence in the past and it doesn't now either. The fact is, we're just well suited. We understand each other, understand each other's way of being. That's why the online relationship works, because we are both online people, we both do most of our socialising online, and we both feel comfortable in that environment. Luckily, we both feel comfortable in each other's physical presence too. That helps.

Actually, this time will be the first time that we will be seen in public as a couple. I am sort of looking forward although I wonder how he will find it - I'm a bit more outgoing than he is. I am sure it will be fine though. After all, we can't selfishly closet ourselves away forever, although we both feel a strong urge to nest when we are together.

Sigh.

I hate being this far away from him. I yearn for the day when I can move over, that we can get a place together and start doing all the things that proper couples do. Not that it's a given, you understand. I'm not assuming. I'm hoping. I'm creating for myself a vision of the future, a future that I want to live in. Writing my life into existence.

But I so want to be able to do just the mundane things. Shopping. Decorating. Watching a film with a bottle of wine. Silly little things like that which other people dismiss or take for granted are really important to me. Shopping for food especially. It's an expression of normality, of commitment, of a life lived together the like of which I have only dreamed of in the past. These things, to me, are where the romance is. Not flowers or chocolates, but walking round the supermarket deciding what to cook for dinner tomorrow.

I can't begin to tell you how much I yearn for that.

Ah, I'm full of emotions today. Better to get them out here, rather than carry them with me and let them ferment inside of me. I'm in love in a way that I've never been in love before, and I desperately want to tell the world, but the world doesn't really want to know, and is mainly skeptical. The world has seen me 'in love' before (or what it thinks was me in love) but it doesn't realise that this is different, that this time I am in love, not just in love. Except I can't articulate why. I can only wait and allow time to prove me right.

I miss him so much. It's like a hard knot in my chest, as if my heart can't quite beat properly without him here. But instead of telling him, I write it here, because I'm scared that I might be too intense. I need time to prove me right.

Love is...

When all the cliches come true. When he really is the air that I breathe, everything I need. When he's the last thing I think of at night, first thing I think of in the morning and the only thing I think of when I can't sleep. When I want to uproot my life and start a new one with him. When I am willing to go half-way round the world to do so.

I have never, ever been in love like this before. I've never felt this enraptured by someone, this besotted, this adoring. All I want is to put my arms around him and kiss him. Everything else is secondary. Eating, breathing, sleeping - all optional compared to the need to be with him.

I would give my life for him. But I would rather make new ones instead. Without doubt I want to share mine with him.

I know all this is true. I knew it the instant I saw him, and as time passes, it just becomes truer.

Pity there is an ocean in the way.

Welcome to my new blog

No links, no comments, no identifying marks... No posting schedule. No identity.

Wat leuk!