Side-by-side

All those long dark, dismal days spent in complete loneliness now seem like the most distant of distant memories. It's almost like we dreamed them up,  the lonely seemingly never ending days and weeks.

Anyone going through, or having gone through a LDR, knows how much of a journey it can be. A journey in every sense of the word both mentally and physically. My partner and I now scoff and lament over the pregnant pauses we dealt with daily on Skype and Viber, the times you frequently talked over each other, the times you longed to see their face and hear their voice. All the times you struggled for conversation and in the deep recesses of your mind wondered does he/she still love me. I now shudder when I hear a Skype or Viber ringtone.

It's a time in my life I never have a wish to repeat. No matter if it's only a month or week we are apart. However, it's also a serious learning curve when it comes to relationships. If you feel the same way about them when you left the airport as when you first embrace them at the arrivals gate...then they are the one. The one you should be spending the rest of your life with.

If I could repeat our Ldr all over again, the only thing I try to do differently is maintain a healthy active lifestyle. I didn't, my method of dealing with the separation was to sulk, and wallow in my self-pity, while gently nudging depression away with every passing day. As I said It's the ultimate test of character for you both and your partner. We had no problems with trust, we trusted each other, we knew neither would be foolish enough to throw it all away by cheating. Not to sound clichéd but if you have faith and trust in your partner, then that goes a long way to quell the emotional sadness you feel daily.

The distance is the worst, knowing you're nowhere near them on a daily basis. Knowing you can't be anywhere near them on a daily basis. Cursing the omnipresent evil that is time difference. Time difference makes quite the difference all right, it can make you tired, grumpy, irritable, unengaged, unresponsive and a lot more. You are forever in a constant battle to get a time that suits both sides to talk. Usually, it ends up being too early or late for either person.

Even writing this now three months after my partner and I  have reunited the depression, and repressed feelings are still there, they gushed out of me as I wrote this piece. They're buried somewhere in my subconscious. They'll always be there. Reminding me of the bad times and reminding me now how I'll strive never to feel those feelings again. Amazingly enough, our long distance eventually ended, and it returned to being a side by side relationship. I know for a fact when you're going through an LDR, it has the power to take over your life, to make you constantly lonely and miserable, it can make you a pale shadow of your former self. But amazingly enough, it does come to an end.

I know now in the grand scheme of things I don't/didn't have a lot to complain about, people worldwide experience a lot worse than what I did when I was going through an LDR. We were seven months apart it, felt like seven long years. When we reunited, we didn't rush headlong into each other's arms, with waterfalls of tears rushing down our cheeks. We casually hugged and chatted like we were never apart (partly due to the fact neither of us is good with PDAs*)  like we were both catching up with an old friend.

The minute we met it was like we were never apart. Like I had never left Australia, I had never left her side, that I hadn't experienced living at home again for seven months. I was welcomed back by my new extended family with open arms. Now three short months later we've decided we will never be apart again. My partner is no longer just a partner, I'm proud to say she is my wife to be. We now live together in London and are already planning our next adventure together, our future life together.

I often think of those dark days during quiet reflection. I think of how bad I was—versus how I am now. As I've already said not only is it a physiological test, it's a physical test, an endurance test, a test of patience and faith, but a test you'll pass one day with flying colours. A test I hope you'll never have to sit again.

*PDA - Public displays of affection.

My sanity, my love, my emotions, my self

It’s fair to say you lose some sense of your sanity and well being as you meander through the course of a long distance relationship. Day to day life becomes almost unbearable you feel that you’re partaking in life, but that life itself is passing through you, passing you by bit by bit. In this state you can start to question yourself, and you can also start to question your other half (Which is always a tricky game at the best of times). This questioning, in turn, tends to be greatly multiplied when she’s on the other side of the world.

You know things will work, and you’ll be back together soon enough, but that doesn’t make it any easier, any more bearable. Physical distance is one thing mental distance is a completely different feeling. To know you’re not really connecting with the one you love on a day to day basis is disconcerting. All you hear is old news, recycled news that is delivered to you with less effort, less emotion, less impact, less panache. The other person has already experienced his or her day why would they feel like replaying the news frame by frame to you?

Sometimes your body decides not to play along with your restless mind humming with questions, theories, help, guidance, love and sometimes anger. You can’t speak because the mouth can’t keep up the body is weak after a day of work. Sometimes you find yourself with a whole day to ponder a Skype or Viber call, to read into stuff that’s not there, to judge and be judged, to jump to conclusions, to question, to basically drive yourself that little bit more insane as the other person sleeps. But you know they’ll wake up with the same feeling you went to bed with, a head full of unanswered questions and unsolved emotions.

Sometimes you don’t get a chance to talk every day, sometimes this stretches to two maybe three days or longer. In this time period, your mind can almost consume you, you can’t focus on the day to day. You see everything and sometimes everyone as mundane, you become almost bitter. You become jealous of friends, of the life they are living, the love they are sharing, the joy they are feeling while you sit there stewing in a ball of confused and stunted emotions, pondering the use in becoming a recluse full stop. But it's times like this these no matter how shitty or unfocused you feel, to use an age old cliché you have to dig deep, to summon an inner strength, a mental reserve.

You have to remember what that person on the other side of the world means to you. How they’re trying to motivate you, encourage you. Most of the time we don’t let our hearts speak over our minds. We let ‘common sense’ prevail; you start to question the very reason you’re feeling a certain way.  Why am I feeling like this? I shouldn’t be feeling like this?!, I bet you their not feeling like this, and it goes on and on ad infinitum. Until you’re back to square one questioning yourself and the whole point of it all (life that is).

Not only do I feel like the past 5 months or so have been the hardest I’ve ever faced, I know they’ve been the hardest months I’ve ever faced. All this time I’ve been without the one I love, my rock of sanity and dependence, but at least it’s coming to an end. In 30 short days this whole period of my life will draw to an end, and hopefully, it will never open again.

If anyone is reading this having started off on an LDR or find themselves in the middle of one all I can say is that it will get better. The gamut of emotions you feel every day can be managed but never tamed. Just don’t let them consume you because they will make you endure some of your darkest days. Don’t lose your sanity and most importantly never question the one you love. Know that the love you feel is being replicated although you mightn’t always feel it, or hear it every day, but it’s there. It’s like an inner flame the one thing that will keep you going no matter how many dark days you endure. After all at the end of the day Amor Vincit Omnia!

T minus 30 days.

Hello who are you again?

Recently I've found one of the biggest obstacles of LDR's is that not only do you lose a sense of who you are as a person, but you also lose sight of who the other person is in the relationship. 10-20 minute Skype calls tend to force you onto a pedestal of sorts. You feel the need to preform, to engage, to excite, to entertain. You aim to achieve these in an extremely short window of time and in my case more than not you fail miserably. Through life, you can almost choose a default setting or different versions of yourself to suit the situation you find yourself in, or more importantly the people you find yourself dealing with. When you're speaking to your other half there can't be any deception, there's no escape route, they're can't be because then quite frankly your relationship is built on lies. Not only are you trying to bluff your other half, but you are also trying to fool yourself. And needless to say, he/she should see right through your lies.

We all like to think we're deep thinking individuals with multiple levels and layers of thought and emotion. But at the end of the day, we're not. We are just simple human beings following our primal urges and instincts. In everyday interactions, you can sometimes lose sight of what attracted you to a person in the first place, what made you fall in love with them. You can lose sight of the little changes in the person, their needs and wants. While others see the changes and fail to react or in most cases, they see them and choose not to react so as not to upset the person you love. These little day-to-day mishaps get multiplied by the hundreds when you're on the other side of the world staring at a computer screen. You're sometimes torn between saying something and between biting your tongue..hard.

I found there can be no middle ground when it comes to feelings. You have, to be honest with each other distance shouldn't be a factor. For a relationship to survive you have, to be honest with each other, provoke, entice and cajole each other. You shouldn't let the other person slip into bad habits or allow them to dwell on negative thoughts. At the end of the day, people enter relationships because they need someone. Sometimes we put too much or too little pressure on the other person. Sometimes we project our deepest fears and insecurities onto them. Most of the time we long for their affection and approval and a lot of the time we just end up hurting each other through our actions or words.

Relationships are all about compromise about incorporating another person into your life with sometimes wildly different views, beliefs and emotional needs to you. It's a fine balancing act to care, love, support and maintains a relationship and a love for a fellow human being. We're selfish beings at the best of the time, but you can't afford to be selfish in a relationship whether near or far.

As much as you can't afford to lose sight of yourself and your needs, wants and goals it's doubly important not to lose your other halves. He/she should be your best friend, the centre of your world, the one you think of during every passing day. The one you strive to please, the one you can't fathom a future without.

I'm missing you today

I just wanted to write about the ever consuming manifestations that come along with the feeling of loneliness. How one emotion can rule your whole day. It's been possibly the most obvious and far-reaching knock-on effect from this LDR. Usually like clockwork, it strikes hard at the weekend. It's amazing the small things that oil the wheels in your mind. Like an innocuous T.V. programme about booze buses and RBT'S (Random Breath Tests). The episode just happened to be filmed in a town, and my girlfriend and I visited at the start of the year. And then it starts—the memories. Oh, here's that shop, that restaurant, that street, that sweet shop, I wonder is that nice man still working in that shop? It's like a broken dam once the memories and emotions flow you can't stop them you just brace yourself and get ready for the mental ride.

I mean a lot of the other things you can keep in check like keeping busy, talking to each other daily, thoughts of the other person. But you can't keep loneliness in check. It's an ever present sometimes cruel master. A chain reaction of emotions can lead on from loneliness. If I'm not lonely I won't be sad, If I'm not sad I could be happy, If I'm happy I could feel content again.

Acknowledging loneliness is half the battle at the end of the day we're only human. Distance is lonelinesses partner throughout. And he/she is playing a blinding role backing up the loneliness with 17,370 km's or so between us. You could be the wealthiest man or woman in the world but you could still be lonely. Ironically if someone came up with a physical cure for loneliness they would become overnight millionaires.

You have to try tackle the problem in new inventive ways as time rolls on with seconds bleeding into minutes into hours into days into months. Rather than seeing loneliness as an Everest-like obstacle in your path to happiness and contentment try see it (and manage it) a series of smaller obstacles. Find new ways of breaking up the time, new ways of having the same old conversation over a web cam. At least that's what I'm trying to do, I feel I have to do it or I'll be at the loss of my sanity.

Another massive knock-on effect that links arm in arm with the mental side of loneliness is the physical side. The physical loss of your partner. No intimacy, no lust, no closeness, just pent up frustrations. Which in turn manifest themselves into mood swings. I find myself going from being perfectly fine and relatively content to grumpy and irritable in what feel like a couple of nanoseconds.

But for all my complaining and longing it is what it is. It will be worth it all in the end all, the frustration and lonely days and nights will someday be a distance memory.

Hello is there anybody out there?

You want to write, but the words just don't come out!..unfortunately in my case the do and they're usually jumbled. A state of flux doesn't lend itself to the greatest of writing. I actually feel sorry anyone who stumbles across my blog as they probably think of me as some desperate, lonely sad case. Although I am desperately lonely. The Skype chats between my girlfriend and I have become almost routine, formulaic. The novelty of seeing and hearing a loved one on the other side of the world somewhat wears off when you can't touch them when you can't truly connect with them, people can talk for hours and hours on end and end up saying nothing.

I'm hoping the next few months pass quicker that the first month or so. The old cliche of some days being harder than others is true. My hardest day is usually today Sunday for whatever reason. Most likely it has to do with the amount of free time I have on my hands versus the other days when I manage to keep myself occupied and somewhat sane. My sanity is not helped by the fact I'm living in rural Ireland with my parents on the wrong end of my 20's. But you know what, that's all excuses. Excuses are what a lot of people use to justify their 'sadness'. Some people wallow in their sadness, I have been gladly wallowing in mine for the past couple of weeks.

But it gets you nowhere, it will eventually drive you insane. Being away from your loved one shouldn't come at the expense of your sanity. There is a hell of a lot of people going through much rougher times than I. My uncle in law who for the past 18 months or so has been battling gainly against rampant cancer, has just been told this week that cancer has spread into his kidneys. What an absolute body blow for a man that was expecting a bit of good news from one of his routine check-ups.

He's been pretty much handed a death sentence. I dread to think how I'd react to such news (not well going by how I'm coping with my current circumstance.)  I suppose what I'm trying to say is that no matter how bad you perceive your life to be there's always someone worse off than you. Just think about them the next time you bemoan your current situation and surroundings. I should give thanks that I'm healthy and relatively happy because in the blink of an eye it can all change. It's a funny old caper this life craic.

* I know what I'm saying is in no way vaguely original and has been said a million times. It doesn't change the fact that sometimes you have to experience the really shit times in your life to truly appreciate the good times.

A Different Perspective - Long Distance Blues

I attempted to write an article about what a person endures during a long distance relationship. I sent the draft to my girlfriend to see what she thought —if it could be improved, edited, etc. Her response is under my original article. Her response goes to show how it's always enlightening to get someone else's perspective on a subject.

We all know the abundant clichés about long term relationships, but one thing’s for sure they are tough. We all have days when we long to see, hug and kiss our other half, it’s particularly hard when your better half is on the other side of the world. Aside from the obvious problems like time differences, distance, etc. There’s a dearth of hidden psychological issues that arise from this type of relationship. Whatever about the loss of physically being with another person it’s another strain completely when it comes to the mental side. Tiredness often plays a big part as neither party is on an even keel, it’s either early morning or late at night on either side. Nowadays you’ll be met with the stock phrase sure you have the Internet, Skype, Viber, e-mails it was a lot harder in our day. That may be well and good to some people, I for one disagree. I agree nothing compares the short-lived buzz you get when you see and hear your girlfriend/boyfriend, wife/husband through a laptop screen. For those short-lived moments, it’s like you fall in love with the person all over again. The anticipation, the racing heartbeat as you wait for the other person to pick up. You’re bursting at the seams to tell them all your news only to instantly forget it once the conversation is underway. If I had a euro for every time I got off Skype cursing that I didn’t ask a particular question I’d be quite the wealthy man. 

All the feelings of happiness and contentment are quickly stolen away from you as you hit the red phone button and the screen goes blank again, you’re left with only your reflection and an empty feeling. No amount of technology or gimmicks can replicate the feeling you get when you’re with the other person face-to-face. Long distance relationships are hard and require a lot of effort, you must put your complete and total trust in another person. We all know the hardship is worth it in the end, after all a few short months or year(s) apart are nothing compared to a lifetime together. However, the in-between part is still quite hard.

My girlfriend's response - 

We all know long distance relationships are hard. But nobody talks about the hidden problems that couples face when they are in a long distance relationship- mainly because you sound like a selfish prick if you do. You have to watch your partner be okay without you.

You have to watch them go out, have fun and succeed, all without you there. You pretend to be happy for them because you know you should, and you do. But you also can't help but feel a sting because you aren't there. You're not experiencing it with them. You're not the number one go to for the chats because you’re not there when the 'thing' happens and by the time you're told of the 'thing,' it's told in a blasé way because it's be told before and has lost its significance. You know you should be happy, and you are happy for your partner, but it stings. And if they can survive without you—why would they choose to keep you?
Their world doesn’t revolve around you anymore and the harsh realisation that yours doesn't revolve around them either. It sparks endless self-reflection, criticism and wondering what your relationship is based on. If it's strong enough, it will survive. If not, another relationship will bite the dust. The good news is if it does survive- you know that it's worth the trouble.

2.5 week blues - 'Since my Baby Left Me'

I'm writing this post because I have to write. Most of my days are spent with a mass of emotions revolving around my head. I know I've done the right thing in coming home, but it does nothing to ease the pain I feel of having had to leave Australia and my girlfriend behind. Skype helps but it's an almost evil device. It gives you a glimpse of the one you love, a chance to hear their voice, a quick peek into their everyday life and before you know it...BOOM! They're gone again! The red phone button is pressed, the quick flash of a white screen and you've transported back to reality the Instantaneity of it all. Sometimes the sense of longing you had before skyping is doubled by the time you hang up, but alas it's a necessary evil. I can't even begin to comprehend how people went through Long Distance Relationships before the technology afforded to us nowadays.

The old saying like a ship adrift on the ocean is apt summarization for me now. You do your best to plough on through days like nothing is different, that you can conquer any obstacles. Some days, however, emotions and thoughts catch up with you, and in my case more than often consume me. There's only so long you can keep your finger in the dam. I feel the best thing to do is to write. Write down how I feel, write like I know someone will read this, like a message in a bottle my thoughts and words might reach someone in a distant land. With Skype and Viber I tend to freeze on the spot and forget half the things I wanted to say or dodge what I really want to say by asking the bland questions. The how was your day? What's the weather like? questions.

Even as I write this, I can feel a weight lifting off my shoulders. The haze in my mind is lifting. I know there is a lot of people out there with worries, fears and problem far greater than I. However it doesn't change the fact that I feel separated. Separated from the one person in the world I want to be with more than any, the sense of separation from my family and friends, from where I'm back living in. 

However like anything in life you have to roll with the punches and take a couple of kitchen sinks to the face. At the end of the day, this current period I'm going through will only serve to improve me as a person, make me more rounded, make me more aware of my place on this earth. You must always acknowledge your emotions and try not to bury them. But at the same time, you can't let them dictate your day to day discourse.

I've dabbled enough in self-pity at this stage to realise I don't like it. To finish off on yet another massive cliche, I have only begun to enter the tunnel.