Love Story

I get asked pretty regularly how I survive my very long distance relationship. And I get asked pretty regularly how I've done it for nearly 6 years and we're still trying to get into the same place permanently.

The first answer is easy. We have Skype, we have email, we have iMessage. We talk to each other constantly. I talk to him 5-6 times a day and message all day. We share photos of our day, we relate our lives to each other in minute detail. And then we get home and we Skype we catch up on the news, social events, constantly talk tech, politics, gaming, comics, movies. We watch movies together because we can perfectly time our Apple TV's so we're in sync. We talk pretty constantly for 3-4 hours on Skype, plus during the day.

We have everything you have in your in person relationship, except that we're cooking for one and we desperately miss the cuddles, the kisses, and the intimacy that comes with being in the same country.

How do we do this for nearly 6 years?

Every day with him is a gift. All my previous relationships involved me giving more, being more, than my partner. I had to sacrifice so much to be with the person in loved. In a couple of relationships I nearly sacrificed my sanity to be with my chosen love. In this relationship we are equal. He encourages me to have my career, my passions, he builds my strength and confidence in myself every day, and he has never judged me for how I manage my fairly constant anxiety. He has never once asked me to not take medication. He has never once told me it's all in my head. He supports me every day through all my choices and I do the same for him.

Over the last 5+ years I have learned so many wonderful details of the man I love. From his terrible handwriting, to the time he spends in the shower, to the fact his poems always rhyme and he has no idea how to cook Spanish rice, but can tell me how to cook Spanish rice, it's all contributed to this glue that is us and what we're becoming.

Every day I learn new things, about what he loves, what we share, the passions and hopes we have for our future together and the children we want, the life we hope to live when we manage to make our dreams become a reality.

All those things are magical to me. And so, when someone asks how it is we can do this thing for so long, it mystifies me, because how can we not?

My dad always told me this story that he said was from Norse mythology.

In the beginning there was no man, no woman, there was just one being, one whole, perfectly balanced. Then the gods shook the earth and the being split in half and the halves were scattered all around the world, destined to search high and low for the other half that achieved the perfect balance. Sometimes that perfect half is a perfect friend, someone who understands you when you don't even understand yourself. Sometimes it's a life partner that gives you the strength to be all you want to be. They bring your soul peace.

In my life Americo is that. Both perfect friend, and perfect life partner. He is yin to my yang. Together we are the balance that allows us both to find where we are supposed to be. We never step in front of each other, trying to be first, we simply side by side provide the support that makes us bother stronger, better people.

There is no answer to why we keep doing this, how we can be this strong, this committed, this enduring. We simply are, because the alternative is that to be without each other doesn't make any sense at all.

Because we are us. And us is amazing.

I had a plan...

I was going to be good today. I had a plan. It involved being calm and listening to podcasts, and getting through the day just fine. I wasn't going to dwell on Americo going home, I was going to focus on the fact we're finally getting our shit together and next year we'll make the visa thing happen.

I was going to put together a checklist of things I had to do to start pulling together all the visa paper work (again), hook up the printer, and start doing instead of sitting around sobbing.

I wasn't going to dive into a bucket of donuts and a giant bowl of pasta.

I wasn't going to throw up all over myself.

Obviously, this plan was pretty unrealistic.

Airport, totally fine. Got moved to a direct flight, kept his economy plus seat even though he changed flights, we did the quick goodbye to avoid the inelegant airport hysterics, I paid my $20 for 30 minutes of parking (I wish I was joking) and got on the road.

Aisha Tyler's podcast is a delight. Nathan Fillian and Wayne Brady charming and delightful guests. I had a fabulous cheesecake in Goulburn and all was well. A tiny tear in the airport, a catch in the throat when he called before boarding, no problems. I'm a calm, put together, type a control freak, I can just keep moving and get home.

And then, what I can do is go to the supermarket, burst into tears while trying to pick a leek, and then get home and vomit all over myself because I cried til I couldn't breathe, which for me leads to hurling.

So, plan fail. Spectacular fail. Chocolate mousse cheesecake vomit fail.

Btw, chocolate mousse cheesecake is not something you want to vomit all over yourself. It doesn't taste good coming up. It's sticky. And no grown up should ever have to clean vomit out of their hair unless they're absolutely wasted after too many mojitos.

I don't really know what to do next. Go have a shower and wash the vomit out of my hair, I suppose. Make pasta, eat donuts, get my shit together and start planning. Even the shower seems pretty impossible right now. Food total idiocy. Getting my shit together is probably the most hysterical concept of all.

I don't remember how to plan days that don't involve coming home to him. I don't want to remember.

I just wish this shit wasn't so fucking hard. Love shouldn't have to involve leaving someone you love at an airport. It just shouldn't.

Time Travel

For me, music is memory. I hear a certain song and it takes me to a time, a place, a moment that is special to me.

I hear Rossini's William Tell Overture and I'm at my fathers old house, listening to a crackling fire, drinking hot, sweet, milky tea, and listening to dad read me and Yolande the Hobbit with all the voices.

I hear Peter Paul and Mary and I'm on one of hundreds of long car trips with mum and Davy going to Melbourne, or Sydney, or Brisbane, or driving across America listening to Davy sing along to every song.

Because of this attachment to music, which I'm sure is genetic, the gift that Americo got me for Christmas this year is probably the best gift I've ever been given. He made me a mix tape. Of all the songs that are "us". Our Rockband favourites, the ones that we'd hear in the car when we were driving around San Francisco or from Sydney to Canberra after a long plane flight, or the ones that just remind us of each other. Every moment of our four and a half years together, all on one USB drive.

I went for a long drive today and listened to all the song and it was like he wasn't 12,000km away, it was like he was in the car with me. I could smell the Cool Water and feel his hand on my leg and every song was perfect.

And since they're all in my head, a list, and some of my favourite memories:

Hey there Delilah - Plain White Tee's
It was probably near midnight on a Sunday night and I'd been called into work to do some testing. And the road was empty and it was cold and this song came on the radio and it just reminded me of him. We didn't know where we were going, friends, something more, was it too soon after my divorce, was the long distance too tough, but in that moment, listening to that song, I thought of nothing but him. And that was that, all the questions were irrelevant, we'd make it work.

Bubbly - Colbie Caillat
Just one of those songs, it was probably the lyrics, but we just loved it. The lyrics reminded him of me. And it just become special over time.

California Love - Dr Dre Tupak 
Obviously.

Oh Sherrie - Steve Perry 
So ridiculous. For a week on my first trip to San Francisco he had this song stuck in his head and had no idea what it was or who did it. Then we were in a winery in Napa and they were playing it in the background and we were both singing along with it trying to remember the name of the song. It was a great moment.

Sweet Child O'Mine - Guns'N'Roses
Once upon a time I was telling Americo about a crush I had when I was 14. This crush, wannabe poet and bad boy, gave me a love note once that was the lyrics to Sweet Child and Americo thought that was pretty pathetic. And so, he rewrote Sweet Child with new lyrics, just for me. It's somewhere in my house on a piece of paper, but I can't find it.

I'm Afraid of Americans - Bowie
Ha!

Piano Man - Billy Joel
Wake Me Up When September Ends - Green Day
Superstition - Stevie Wonder 
ABC - Jackson 5
Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
our favourite Rockband songs. Some mornings when I was in SF we would wake up, before even coffee, and start playing, singing our throats sore.

Little Lion Man - Mumford and Sons
Every time we got in a car in San Francisco EVERY TIME this song was on the radio. And we'd sing along like idiots.

New York Minute - The Eagles
From the West Wing episode Somebodies Going to Emergency, Somebodies Going to Jail, one of my favourite episodes of my favourite show. We've watched it together a few times, and watched it apart a few times. Just this Christmas I started watching it, and was a couple of episodes into season 1, and then he decided he wanted to watch it too. So I spent whole days half watching where I was up to, and more time listening to the episode he was watching. And we'd talk about politics, and the characters, and science, and language and just talk for hours. About everything. And it was perfect. He's my Toby, my amazing writer.

Land Down Under - Men at Work
He taunts me with this song. Constantly.

And dozens and dozens of other songs that were moments of our lives that are precious and wonderful and just make me love him so much that he would sit down and think of these songs that mean so much to us.

Thank you, love, it means so much that you know me "us" so well. And that you know me so well that you knew I'd love this.

Now every time I get into the car instead of listening to a shitty radio show with sexist hosts and bad music I get to remember all the great moments we've had together. And I'll probably be far less cranky at work.

I'm here, he's not, and fuck the whole world.

Everyone that knows me is probably pretty sick of my long distance relationship whining. Which is fair enough, because about every 3-4 months or so I do one of these posts about how despondent I am after leaving my fiance at an airport.

This post is no exception.

I picked up Americo at the Sydney airport on April 4th this year. It seems completely impossible that three months have gone by in the cliched heart beat and I've had to take him back to Sydney to see him smile at me sadly before he goes around the corner into security.

I had thought, this being our fourth adventure into this particular piece of heart break, that this time might be easier, and for most of the trip it was. I was holding it together so well, no tears, super tough, til 3/4 of the way home.

And then there was a guy singing on a podcast I love and shit totally went south. I had no idea who he was, since as far as I know we don't get the Voice over here, but this guy was singing solo and it killed me. The simple start of Water to Wine and the tears started, by half way through the song I had to pull over, and had to stay on the side of the road sobbing for a good 30 minutes. Damn that Nakia (songs are available on iTunes, check them out).

Anyway, made it home safely, did the groceries, and sobbed my way around an empty house which is too quiet, and smells like his cologne.

The couch is too empty, the bed too big, and the whole fucking world is stupid and I hate you all with your husbands, wives, partners in the same city as you. Even the same country as you. The same continent. I hate you all.

It's all cliche that you appreciate things more if you have to work for them, and it seems to be true in this case, since every trip, and every absence makes this both easier and harder in equal measure. And it's more worth it every day, because I love this guy, from his stupid ass jokes (you really have NO IDEA just how stupid they are) to his dumb notes on the pantry telling me to eat vegetables.

One day soon we'll figure our shit out, he'll sell a movie, I'll pay out my debt, and I'll move to California because he's there, and I'm here, and that's just stupid.