Next week, Jeremy and I are meeting in Madrid.
You might think it's romantic, meeting the man you love in a foreign country. In reality it just means travelling alone, which means I don't have anyone to tell me that planes don't crash because of turbulence, and while I'm not entirely convinced by this (and have recently garnered evidence that it can do you some serious injury), it's comforting to have someone's hand to clutch and squeeze hard whenever the seat-belt sign gets switched on. Also, this time, Jeremy (who arrives 6 hours earlier than me) has gallantly declared he's going to the hotel to sleep and I can make my own way there. While I don't really want him hanging around jet-lagged for 6 hours, I also kinda do...
Anyway, I digress. What I've been thinking about is that this is one of the last time we're going to be doing this - where it once felt that this crazy scenario of airport hellos and goodbyes would never end, there are now a finite amount of these left. So I've been thinking if there's anything about long-distancing that I'm gonna miss...
....
Nope, nothing.
Here's the thing - long distance relationships suck. Embarking on one was probably the daftest thing I've ever done (and I'm still amazed that Jeremy, pragmatic as he is, even contemplated it). They are sleep-sapping, paranoia-inducing, money-draining and intimacy-lacking. My mum is fond of telling me that relationships don't stay still, they either go forward or back. Well I reckon that for every 2 steps of relationship progress Jeremy and I made when together, there's been at least 1 step of regress when apart (1.5 in Februarys.) Thankfully (miraculously?), we seem to be good enough together when together that in 6.5 years of 2 steps forward, 1 step back we've managed to progress to marriage.
So when we meet in Madrid this time, it's going to be with a growing sense of achievement and anticipation - that future journeys will be made with hands to hold (I doubt Jeremy is too pleased about this) and most importantly that planes wont need to be boarded or time zones crossed in order to see each other.
Of course I shouldn't get too smug - they say the first year of marriage is the hardest, and in that year I've chosen to move countries and so eliminate my entire support system. But hey, we've made it this far... I'm going to shut up now before I start singing Shania Twain.
Beautifully written Hannah, really! Hey, first year of marriage wasn't that hard for us (I speak for Miguel, he's not allowed a voice).
ReplyDeleteTell Jeremy he's a lazy bugger and he can bloody well go and sleep and then come back and meet you!