They Say

Three Christmases and New Years apart, you’d think we were already used to it. That or we ought to (at the very least) have gotten better at overcoming the Separation Syndrome.

But it never gets easy, does it?

There remains a sting, an uneasiness with the way our Christmas cards are dealt each year. You’re there, I’m here. Thus, the alternative seems to be to resort to internet greetings and ‘online togetherness’. Here we are, in separate continents, surrounded by different crowds, preoccupied with various things, and yet, wanting it otherwise.

The irony of ‘together’ and yet ‘apart’ intensifies as I desperately try to mask whatever sadness on days like this. I have hoped for better eves and longed for more traditional count downs together. Embarrassed as I am to admit this, I have had moments of wishing I could kiss you on the very second the year elapses as another one draws in. But it never seems to fit. Being apart seems to be ‘our thing’.

There are times when I think to myself if we’re being fair to each other. There are moments of frustration when I wonder if we’re desperately putting the wrongs keys in the right hole (or the right keys in the wrong hole), if we might be better off without each other, better off with others more suitable to our respective interests, schedules, and all the other, off the bat excuses I force myself to come up with. I have moments when I think throwing in the towel might be the solution. But who am I kidding, really? Could I really live with that? Am I that stupid to give it all up? Just because it never gets easy?

And so, here comes another year. We usher it in. With you there. And me here. What’s there to say then? What’s there to say to a person I fear has the most influence on me and my faint (make believe-brave) heart?

Dear You,

Here comes another year. Another challenging year of highs and lows, of petty fights and down-right-dirty wars, of time together and time apart. Here goes another year of you dealing with the crazy, confused and complex me. I’m sorry for being a pain in the bum, for driving you insane, for being the brat that wants everything, for always wanting to have the last say, for not realizing how self-absorbed I can be, for being so unaware of how you just indulge me, for loving you in unconventionally butch ways, for not always making you happy, for making you sad, or mad, or every other negative adjective under that list.

So here I am waiting to usher in the New Year, while yours has already elapsed. Stupid isn’t it? Why can’t we just share and spend one together? But as that song goes, from a singer I can’t name at this very moment, ‘That’s the way it is.’

You know what else?

They say these things get better with time.

They also say things can get worse over time.

They say time is golden. (Let me interrupt and say time apart is shit.)

They say time apart can eat away at a relationship.

They say we’re young and cluelessly navigating the world.

They say we still have our whole lives ahead of us and not to be so keen on the idea of ‘us’ just yet.

They say I shouldn’t give my whole red-pumping organ (a.k.a. heart) to you.

They say we could get hurt.

They say it could be you.

They say it might not be you.

They say we’re on odd fit.

They say distance is a bitch.

They say that the way a couple spends their New Year’s Eve foreshadows/forewarns a couple’s future.

They say we’re doomed.

They say.

They say.

They say.

You know what I say?

I love you.

You ask me often if I do, and I get surprised each time you do. Do I not make you feel that way? Do I not say it with enough conviction? And then it dawns on me, “Oh yeah, we’re talking about me.”

I can be the worst person to love because I’ve always been afraid of those 3 words. Afraid of it and afraid to say it, to exclaim it, to proclaim it. Well here I am telling you and the rest of the world (Well, at least, the people who bother to read this) that I do. I love you. It has taken me three new years apart to realize how much I really do. I wouldn’t be in this if I didn’t love you. I wouldn’t be embarrassing myself and clueing the world in on how much I’m in love with you, if I didn’t feel the way I did about you.

Here’s 2011, on a silver platter for you. Let me warn you though that I’m probably still going to be the same crazy, complex, complicated person that I am. I’ll still fight with you, annoy you, hurt you, nag you, blahblahblah. But if there’s one thing I can assure you, it’s that 2011 will be yours alone. You and I know that I’ve had my moments, and I wish I could have dealt with those situations differently. Right now, at this moment, at this very second, I’m telling you that it’s all yours. Mushy as this sounds (and I’ll kill you for reminding me or quoting me on this), it’s always been just you.

Happy New Year, my often-Long Distance-Lover! Here’s to hoping I start the new year right.

I love you, James. 🙂