He'll be home soon.....

Well here I am sat back on a train again and it feels only fitting that I should feel like writing something.  Lately it's only been this blog that's been getting the attention, poor little Eva has been left in the cold...funny thing I've really not felt like writing about her since he's been gone. I can only speculate it is one of two things:

1. I'm no longer single and am very happy.

2. She is/was my outlet when I'm feeling the need to rant about my life through someone else's shoes, however life recently has been like living in someone else's shoes!

Since moving to Manchester there's been an awful lot of things going on!! However, they have all been things that have taken me a long way from my comfort zone. Rather like when you go to a party where you don't know anyone, the pseudo utter bullshit conversation emerges, but it is common courtesy to talk this utter bullshit to people you don't really know...this is what the english call polite isn't it?...but I have to say through all the difficult getting to know people conversations, I have met and made some pretty amazing friends and Manchester isn't feeling so much like some place I've found myself lost in.

Recently a friend came to visit and I actually realised how unlike myself I had been being lately. Whilst he was staying I felt myself again and for the first time in ages I actually really relaxed. 

I knew it was never going to be easy moving to a new place so far from everything I know and having already established my life somewhere else, doing it all again is so much harder. Cue the call to mummy and then best friend... 

"I'm going through the hardest time of my life, new job, new uni, new friends, no family, no boyfriend and no best friends"... 

She was quick to tell me...it was me who was determined to get as far away from the homeland as possible and that of course it was going to be hard, but I'd made my choice so I had to get on with it and make the best of it....oh and 'he'll be home soon'.

I've been hearing that statement an awful lot lately. Best friend conversation went pretty much the same way. They were both right, I'd actively chosen places at opposite ends of the country for my university choices but jeez even having my cat around would be good, just some familiarity!

Oh god the crave of "normal" stuff is immense some days, but then I think oh yes I live here now, I have to make my own sense of normality and lately I've been slowly managing that. When I walk through Manchester it feels normal now, rather like the first day I felt normal in London. It was when I was walking along Tottenham Court Road, all of a sudden I realised it felt completely normal and I didn't feel like a tourist anymore, that and the fact I now was like an over zealous law enforcer to anyone standing on the left hand side of the escalator and I'd suddenly taken a great interest in the ability to read a newspaper on a crammed train at rush hour.

The train is just pulling out of Manchester, the rain is pouring outside (familiar sight I'm realising in Manchester) and memories of a few months ago are trickling back to me. The funny thing is I've not actually been on a train since he left, the last time I was on this one going this way, was when I was with him, he was fast asleep next to me with his head on my shoulder happily drooling away, off to London to wish him goodbye.

With Christmas only a few days away I'm feeling very excited to be seeing my friends, family (which includes the dogs, cats and horses), however I'm a little sad that our first christmas has to be spent apart, with just a Skype call to suffice as a xmas together....hmmm yeh Skype I've already mentioned how me and Skype feel about each other...oh and I think the constant swearing at my mobile has actually had dire effects, as it has decided today that it will not switch on....oops!

It is odd the longer he stays away, the more accepting I am of it and I'm not sure how it is going to feel seeing him again. Don't get me wrong I really want him to come home, I just don't know what my face will do when I see him...fall on the floor hysterically crying, jump up and down clapping like some mad sea lion or just stand there staring vacantly with my mouth wide open? Lots of emotions and feelings have passed through me since he's been gone, sad, lonely, angry (very at some points....mainly at my electrical communication devices), excited thinking about him coming home, utterly miserable and thinking why me? Two weeks ago I was howling down the phone to my mum "why me, I just want him home now, I'm fed up with this now....." and it went on like that for a whole half hour, until eventually she got a hold of the situation and calmed me down. Not sure what I'd do without my mum/counsellor! However, the last few weeks things have got a bit easier, I'm not entirely sure why, perhaps because I'm going home, perhaps because it's xmas or perhaps because 'he'll be home soon'.

I'm really not sure how I planned or thought it would be moving to such a new place, so far away from everyone and everything I knew...all my familiarity and meeting such an amazing man was never included in my pre move brainstorming. It just shows you can never speculate or plan how things are going to turn out.

It has been a very new experience and one of the hardest I think I've had to encounter, but I think I'm slowly getting used to it, the missing piece however is still in Australia but....'he'll be home soon' :) xx

7 Week recap

Another instalment written a while ago that I didn't feel ready to publish, however here it is...

- Well that last instalment was what I wrote on the train home after leaving him in London to catch his plane to Australia...most of it very tearful. It has been an odd 7 weeks without him. Funnily enough it has got easier not because I miss him less but simply because I've kind of accepted this as something that is happening and the best will come out of it surely? Being apart has made each text and phone call more important and I can't wait until I get the next one.

So finally feeling at home in this new city. Very odd, people on public transport actually talk to each other and no-one seems preoccupied with escalator politics or newspaper reading...pity? So many new experiences. Trying to get my brain to function at the pace of a 20 year olds is definitely difficult....meaning trying to learn and remember what is being talked at me in lectures is difficult. This experience is nothing like my first one in London. When I stepped into that city, I knew people there and it felt familiar, I'd been there so many times...This place is alien, the people so very different and it is like being the new person in a class of strangers. Pretty certain I'm going to feel at home here eventually, the walk to University is finally becoming familiar, just one thing missing...

However and the missing rug

The instalment was written as I was sat on the train back from London the day after my boyfriend left, I was very upset when I wrote it and so I decided not to publish it until I felt ready, also I wanted to see how I would feel at the halfway point, well it is now 3 months until he comes home so now it feels right to publish...

"So far living in manchester has proved to be pretty good. I have a new job in a bar I love, I've started riding and have even started going to trapeze lessons every week! Life is pretty good. However and there always is a 'however' isn't there?! It's an annoying little shit of a verb, planting itself in the middle of everything! But 'however' annoying it is, it will crop up, to remind you that even if things are fine and dandy they can change just as fast in the opposite direction. Well after an amazing holiday in Ibiza I was lucky enough to meet someone very special who has since become my boyfriend. 'However' (there it is) he left to go to Australia for 6 whole months on Saturday. I'm going to miss him so much. Strangely enough it happened to fall on the weekend that I traditionally go to SW4 and Nottinghill Carnival. In a way this wasn't so bad my wonderful friends insured that I was kept suitably pissed for the entire weekend and should I start welling up one of them was there with a hug or a stupid face to cheer me up. I said to him last week that things seemed too perfect and that at some point I thought the rug might be pulled out, well now he's gone it definitely has. As I sit on the train back to Manchester, I can't help feeling like I've left something important behind, even though he's not there but 25,000 miles away on the other side of the world. Funny isn't  it you spend 18 months happily being single, you then meet someone and it is all perfect 'HOWEVER' some snag comes along and makes you work damn hard to appreciate it" 

Communication can be a nasty word

Well the 3 month barrier looms tomorrow, oddly it has come as both a comfort and a friendly brick through the air of a reminder, that all that I have gone through this last 3 months, I have to do all again. Surely it can't be that bad can it? Hmmm that's what I was telling myself 3 months ago, when I sat on that train back from London, wondering what it was going to feel like, what emotions I was going to encounter and how I would cope with a new life, a new uni, a new job and an absent boyfriend. The moral support of friends soon rallied round me like a protective security blanket and the word "communication" was continually flung at me rather like protesters with little white signs that ensure you definitely get the message!...."Make sure you communicate all the time, don't lose contact!! It's the only way it'll work"

Can't be that bad can it? As long as we have Skype and the telephone it'll be easy right?

It is no easy task approaching a brand new relationship, the most precious first months or the 'honeymoon period' as people call it, are where you get to know each other. We only had 7 weeks to do this and now the telephone and Skype have become our only means of dating, rather like a third party forcibly involving itself in our relationship, not the most romantic or exciting prospect. Drinking wine and having a "how was your day" conversation when it isn't even his day over there and it's my morning and he's just got up and I'm just going to bed, he's been out and he's drunk and I'm going to bed drunk and he's just getting up...confusing huh?! It definitely is. The need to keep checking the extra clock you've placed next to your UK time in your phone becomes an almost daily occurrence before "communication" ensues.

That's what getting to know someone is really about isn't it? Knowing their habits and what they are like when they're just being them. A mobile phone or a wifi connection doesn't let you do that does it? There's no way of knowing what someone is feeling from words. The telephone forces you to "communicate" and sometimes the best "communication" doesn't needs words.

The telephone is such a bastard, oh really it is! It forces you to make meaningless conversation, when sometimes all you want to do with your boyfriend is to be near them, sat on the sofa, not speaking but being together. The prospect of sharing the same air supply sounds so much better than sharing a wifi connection!

Oh the evil telephone and its kidnapping ways and the evil bitch Skype, that taunts me by showing me his face when I'm not able to touch it. What if the day you decide to talk, is a day one of you or both of you just aren't really feeling much like talking?! We're all human at the end of the day? We don't feel like talking everyday do we? It has happened a few times, one of us tired, not feeling up to talking and the conversation has fallen into silent mode on several occasions. It is neither party's fault, it is simply that sometimes, it's just nice not to talk right? Even if we've had a great conversation, after we've hung up I'm often left staring at my phone and I catch myself telling an inanimate object "I fucking hate you". Yes that's right, I actually hate my phone that has locked my boyfriend inside it. The evil object that makes "communication" a nasty word.

So how will I combat the 3 month brick wall? The same way I've combatted the 3 month kick up the backside which I've just completed, by carrying on, working hard, enjoying my new experiences and hoping that by some miracle mother nature might speed things up a bit. Fat chance but every girl has dreams right?!

I love my university, my new friends, my new found love of riding horses (which I thought was something I'd never combat again) and most of all, I call Manchester my home now and it really does feel like my home now (even with its lack of fervent newspaper readers). I just can't wait for him to be a part of it again. I feel like I've done so much since he's been gone, there's so much I want to show him, simply telling him about it really doesn't make it that exciting.

It has been hard, but it's not all bad, being apart has made me love him all the more, it makes me realise how important just being in each others company really is...I'd crave 5 minutes, to just be stood next to him in the kitchen doing something as simple and meaningless as making a cup of tea, no words, no "communication" simply trivial, unthought actions and everyday dullness! Being apart makes you appreciate the little things just that little bit more and it's going to make them that much better.

The crave of normality is immense and the urge to throw my mobile a daily struggle! So I keep repeating "it's only 3 months" or "12 weeks" as I prefer because weeks don't sound as bad as months do they? Each day that figure slowly depletes, until eventually it will be time for him to come home and the evil word "communication" will be something to enjoy not to dread and perhaps my mobile and I might even become friends again. A life of just words is not one for me, simple things are so much more exciting xxx