I need to do some gardening

With my first week of work under my belt, I'm feeling so many different emotions. I am so, so grateful to be back at work doing what I love. I am also remorseful that I didn't take better advantage of my time unemployed. I am pretty tired getting used to an early rising schedule again, while also maintaining the house. But most of all I really, really miss my people.

Richard was in Omaha last week and I missed him a lot. I wanted to blog about it, but I was too busy missing everyone else in my life, in addition to him. The best part about living apart from Richard for the past two years was my super solid support system. I had great girlfriends to go out with, I had great co-workers, I had an awesome place to live and an awesome job. I love it here, but I'm still not adjusted. I spent most of Richard's week away curled up on the couch terrified. There have been some druggie people spotted in the neighborhood, and some thefts as well, so every sound that went bump I was whipping my head towards the sound and examining every door and window. Which was often because we happened to have two uninvited furry friends rambling around a lot in the kitchen as soon as the sun went down! (They have safely vacated the premises!) I've never lived in such a big place, so it is taking a lot of getting used to. Back home, if Richard was gone for the week I would have packed the week full of dates with my friends and would have been excited to have some time to myself. Here, I had dates with two rats, frozen pizzas, a pissed off bunny and "The Office." I missed him intensely every night.

The job is great so far, it feels refreshing to be working again, but I really miss my co-workers. I don't think I will fit in very well with the people I now work closely with, and that sucks after developing such strong connections with all my previous co-workers. I was really counting on working being my avenue for finding social connections, and now I just don't think it is going to happen. But I am definitely going to try. There is a really nice girl, seems close to my age, from New York that invited me to a Hula class on Monday night. Too bad she works in a different building than I do, but I am definitely taking her up on the invite. There maybe some dinner dates and happy hours in my future after all, so fingers crossed.

Richard has some pretty cool co-workers, but the couple that we like the best are moving back to the mainland next week, so I am also pretty sad about that too. I will definitely miss those two. So that leaves Richard and I being each other's sole (local) support system at the minute. So far, so good. I love having dinner with him after work every night. I think we have transitioned out of the honeymooning, but we are comfortably content. We are in a full blown "Lost" addiction. We are about to finish Season Four, so I don't know what we are going to do with ourselves once we are all caught up on the show, but it has been very fun getting into it together. All in all everything is really, really good. But I am missing my friends. Filled one hole only to create another. And the thing is, with these kind of holes, you can't just fill them in with anything. Some things, some people, are simply irreplaceable. So instead of looking for some filler, I have to start looking for some seeds to plant, and hopefully some new ties will grow.

Disconnect

This week hasn't been any easier emotionally than last week. I don't know why I can't seem to pull myself out of this funk. I know what I have been feeling depressed about, it isn't one thing, and it isn't anything fixable over night. Which I guess explains why I don't really feel any better. But I know that I haven't been very focused on any solutions, which is the biggest part of the problem. I have just been focused on wallowing, which I happen to do quite well, actually.

What also doesn't help matters is my recent disconnect from Richard. I have been trying to explore and figure out how it comes to be that someone I feel closest to can somehow seem the person I am most distanced from. Obvious answer: 396 miles of indisputable distance. Less obvious conclusion I can come up with is that no matter what our circumstances are, they become comfortable. Even the most hideous of human conditions become comforting in simply being what you are used to; what you know best. My relationship is no different. I have definitely become more comfortable with the distance, physically and emotionally. And as he continues to pull away to focus on work, I become more comfortable with the emotional distance. That isn't to say that I like it. I sure as hell don't like it one bit. But it is what it is.

This isn't the first time that this has happened to us. Nothing an intense weekend together won't fix. But sometimes those set-up to fail weekends do just that. And we don't have plans to see each other for another three long weeks. His work is showing no signs of slowing down, and he has a friend in town for two weeks, so rectifying the emotional distance is highly unlikely until we see each other again. Which I should use as an excuse to focus on myself and try to focus on fixing some of the things that have been getting me down. So, with a big sigh, I guess I will get on that. As they say, there is no better time than the present. And like always, he and I will plug back in eventually.

Abyss

Sometimes I feel like I am free falling into an abyss, no bottom to hit in sight. Eventually the fear abates, and all that is left is the anxiety of wondering when it will all end. If I sound melodramatic, I mean to. I want to dispose of some of this angst.

It has been a rough few weeks. Recovering from his family's visit, facing issues with my own family, the large issue of planning the holiday season, issues with my health, issues at work, and of course financial issues. So many issues, it is an abyss of issues! All of this has left me feeling depressed, anxious, and fed up. Nothing that won't alleviate soon. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I know this blog is focused on surviving the relationship, but I'm 50% of that relationship, and when I am not doing well...guess what? It impacts the relationship. I pick petty fights and feel upset about things maybe I shouldn't feel upset about and then I get numb and I don't feel upset about things I should probably feel upset about. Like this coming weekend.

This weekend is my high school reunion. I want him to be there with me. He agreed to go with me. I booked my flight into Los Angeles so we could drive to San Diego together. He has cancelled on me again because of work. I said it was fine, but I don't really feel fine about it. I want him to be there with me. But I feel too depressed about all of the other nonsense happening right now to fight for it. I don't want to have to fight for it. I want him to realize on his own that the right thing to do is to keep his word and accompany me. But as usual, I get to be the one at the dinner with the chair across from her empty. I'm so used to it, it doesn't even really hurt anymore. Its like when you bump an old injury, you get reminded of the pain, but the sting quickly passes. The good news is, I get to see my fabulous friends, and I look forward to them helping me get out of this funk and return to my old self.

Funk removed however, the anxiety of the free fall remains. I am ready for a change. I want to advance my career. I want to live with my partner. I want to make more money instead of spending money on plane fares and renting two apartments instead of just one every month. But the relationship remains part of the abyss. No end to the distance in sight. And now that I won't see him this weekend, I won't see him until October 8th. I feel the itch for something to change. It may hurt hitting that bottom, but I'm so ready.

Always missing...

I have been putting off this post because it isn't a very positive one. I thought if I gave it some time, my attitude would improve. Maybe my outlook would change. But alas, I continue to reside in the bitter barn.

Valentine's weekend overall was okay. Richard and I were in a knock-down drag out fight within about 15 minutes of seeing each other, which is not like us at all. In fact, we have never been in an argument that involved that much shouting. I can't even really recall how it escalated so dramatically and so quickly, but it did. So that poisoned the weekend a bit. We managed to have a decent time at his work event on Friday, by just putting it all behind us. Not the best approach, because nothing was resolved, and the hurt lingers. I still have bitter feelings about things that were said. Saturday spent with my parents was not as painful as I was anticipating. But I didn't get to see my friends, which is the best part of going to San Diego for me. I ended up coming home on Sunday because Richard had to return to Kansas on Sunday, since his job does not honor President's Day as a holiday. That also dampened the weekend. Cutting short what was a long weekend for me.

Despite having seen each other, I reverted right back in to MISSING. I was missing him the minute I stepped foot out of the rental car. Pining, in fact. I am ALWAYS missing. I miss him. I miss sex. I miss companionship. I miss going places together. I miss waking up in the same bed. I miss laughing together instead of always talking about something serious. I feel like I am missing out on a lot that being in a relationship is all about. I am a missing person. But not in the milk carton sense.

The latest is that he is leaving Kansas this weekend. We have plans to meet up in New Mexico to explore Santa Fe, which we have always wanted to do. But I am not holding my breath and am not going to be excited to see him until I am on the plane on Friday. After that, he will be back in SoCal for five months to train new employees before being placed on a job. Five months doesn't sound too bad. However, he was only supposed to be in Kansas for one month. So five months later, I am not confident that five months will not somehow turn into ten months. They just won a bid for a big job in Los Angeles, which is really good news. They are also working on bids for jobs in Anaheim, Blythe, Montana, Guam and possibly a big job right here in the Bay, which I am obviously the biggest fan of. Which naturally means it won't happen. That would just be too easy. So that is it for now. I am going to go and try to find the will to get out of the bitter barn and take a roll in the hay.

Some statistics

I am no mathematician. Anyone that knows me well knows this to be true. I cannot figure out how much to tip a cab driver, and I can barely keep my checking account from getting withdrawn. But I decided to attempt the daunting task of figuring out exactly how many times I actually saw Richard in 2008. Sounds boring? It probably is, but they say you can't argue with numbers, so here goes.

Out of 366 days in 2008, I saw Richard 84 days. That may sound like a lot, but when you break it down into a percentage, that is 23% (.229 to be exact). That isn't even a quarter! When you break it down into weekends, we spent 21 weekends together, 37% of all possible weekends. These are numbers that I am not happy about.

In discussing LDRs with my friends at work earlier this week, I came to the depressing conclusion that I have no perks in my life. I live a life that is similar to that of a single person. I can go out when I want, come home when I want. No one leaves the kitchen cabinets open, or the toilet seat up or smelly socks all over the place. But I don't have any of the perks of being single. I don't get to flirt, I don't get drinks bought for me, and I don't meet new and interesting people in the dating scene. And I go to bed alone 282 nights per year.

And on the flip side, I don't have the perks of being in a relationship. I don't have a date to my holiday party tonight. I don't have someone to hug when I need to, to have everyday romance with. I don't get to say good morning or good night to the person I love. I have someone I talk to almost everyday, but that I only get to touch 84 times in a year.

So my conclusion is that LDRs are a form of self-hate. True masochistic (see second definition) torture. I suppose the payoff is in the end, but with no end in sight, it is hard to not get demoralized.

Back to life

Hello out there and Happy New Year! It has been a long week readjusting back to real life. Richard and I were away for the Christmas holidays. We had a really splendid time. I could gush about it, but I'm trying to focus on getting used to the idea that we are apart again. This past week was the first week back to work, and back to being apart. It wasn't too bad of a transition after spending two solid weeks together. But it wasn't a good one, if there is such a thing.
I don't know really how to express this, but I find myself obsessing a lot. Always checking my phone and refreshing my email. I think part of it is that I know he isn't available for texting or emailing during the day, which results in me wanting it more. Which I guess is a fairly normal response. Tell me I can't have something and I want it that much more. It starts to seem like if I don't get that thing, I may not survive. But the truth is, I do survive. Our relationship survives without flooding each other's respective in boxes. Little expressions of what is our repetitive daily condition. Why do I crave it so much? There really isn't a need for status updates. I love him. I miss him. He loves and misses me. It isn't like the more I say it, or the more I hear it or read it, the less I miss him or the more I love him. The feelings remain the same.
Somehow though, the fact remains that I do want to hear from him more often. Not seeing him everyday really leaves a void. I want to try to fill it by hearing from him more than just our goodnight chat. I want to hear from him throughout the day. I want to know he is thinking about me as much as I am thinking about him. Would I want the contact as much as I do if it became routine? I can't answer that. I know I do notice it when I do receive a text or an email from him every once in a while during the work day. Whenever I complain about this to Richard, his response is, "what did we do before text?" The funny part is that before text we emailed every day and wrote letters. Doesn't really help his argument. At any rate, I think I am accepting that our relationship is what it is. I'm going to work on checking my phone less. I am also going to work on taking care of myself this year. My New Year's Resolutions are to: get into therapy as soon as possible, study and pass both of my licensing exams before the end of the year, and take better care of my health.
As far as our relationship goes, I don't know what the future will hold. Richard is back in Kansas until at earliest middle of February. He does not know when he will be back, or where he will be back to. He has no home in Southern California now. All of his belongings were moved to storage. So whatever the transition will be, it will not be an easy one for either of us. I just received an email from him that his employer is looking for some volunteer's to move to Guam. Guam!?! Yes, Guam. Looks like 2009 may have more upheaval than 2008. The good news is, whatever it is, we will get through it together.

My LDR with my family

As I have mentioned before, I think long-distance relationships come in many packages. You mostly only hear about intimate relationships being long-distance, probably because they are the most traumatic and the most difficult to maintain. But MANY, many of us are separated from our friends and family. Almost every single person I know is far, far away from someone they love deeply. In fact, I am having a hard time thinking of one person I know that is not far away from at least one person they love. And all of these people have to work at maintaining these relationships. I have to work at maintaining my long-distance relationship with Richard and with many of my friends, but I have to work very hard at maintaining my long-distance relationship with my family.
As many of you know, I was born and raised in San Diego. Many of my friends still live in San Diego. I moved from San Diego in 1998 and I haven't lived there again since. I love San Diego. It is a beautiful city, with perfect weather for my liking. I miss being near my friends in Southern California, but I just don't know if I could happily live there again because I think I would have a hard time living in the same city as my family. Plus I am loving my life in Northern California, so for now I remain long-distance from my parents. And this is an issue that causes quite a bit of contention for them.
The problem about this is multi-faceted. One big problem is that my parents are not technology savvy. My father doesn't have a cell phone, so I have no way of contacting him without my mother being there, undoubtedly listening on the other phone, or her face pressed up against his so she hears what I say. He does not know how to work the computer, and she won't teach him. So I have no relationship with my father independent of my mother. She on the other hand is pretty tech savvy. However, we have had some issues with our email communication, and she abused texting, so I had to set a boundary with that one. So our main line of communication is the phone. This has worked out well for the most part. When I first moved away, I was mandated to daily phone calls. Over the last decade this has been reduced to weekly, which works out just fine for me.
The bigger problem in maintaining our long-distance relationship is the issue of visiting. This is complicated by the mental health issues in my family. My mother suffers from acute anxiety, with agoraphobia, which is a fear of leaving the house. This has progressed to the point that she will no longer leave the house alone, and has extreme anxiety leaving the house at all. I pushed and pushed them to come and visit me in 2006. Because of my mother's anxiety about the dog and the house, they chose to come separately. This did not result in a good experience for either of my parents considering they have not gone a night apart in well over 15 years. So they have made it clear that will not happen again. So, they have not come to see me since, and have no plans to do so. This means the responsibility and cost of visits is mine. It can be a heavy emotional burden. It can be a heavier burden when my intimate relationship is now also a long-distance relationship.
In the year since Rich and I have been apart, my parents have not seen much of either of us. And they decided to point that out a number of times in the week leading up to this weekend. They are especially upset about our upcoming trip to visit his family, which makes me so angry I can't even go into it here. The other problem is how different I am from them. My parents are conservative, Christian, Republicans. We differ about issues so much, we cannot even discuss them without anger. My mother informed me this weekend that I am so incorrect in my views, that she cannot even respect my point of view, but will continue to pray for me in earnest. The message I received: I bring shame to my family. Luckily, I am independent enough to not be ashamed of who I am, what I think or how I feel.
So to make a long, frustrating story shorter, dealing with my family is tough stuff. And I have no advice to anyone on how to survive long-distance relationships with family. And this is why my visits to San Diego are short and infrequent. I do not like to endure more than a weekend visit two to three times a year when I may be judged for simply being who they raised me to be. Or made to feel guilty for making my career a priority in this crucial time in my life. Or God forbid, wanting to spend Christmas with my partner and his family, who I have not seen in almost 18 months. And the last time we saw them, is when they travelled almost 10,000 miles round trip to come and visit us. Which unfortunately means I see my San Diego friends less, but I am also lucky enough that they come and see me too! Moral of the story: lots of relationships to maintain and survive, some much more effort than others. I hope all of your long-distance relationships are going smoothly, especially if you just realized that you have some!

Just when it seems safe to breathe...

Something knocks the wind out of me.
Richard just returned from Chicago on Tuesday. I was relieved that he was home and looking forward to falling back into some semblance of a routine together. Then he announced non-chalantly that he was moving to Kansas "for a month or two" on Friday afternoon. Air rapidly escaping lungs.
Okay, time for me to try to untangle this. I think what bothers me so much about this is his attitude that these kinds of changes should have no impact on me. Maybe they shouldn't, maybe I am overreacting, maybe I shouldn't have felt like I got punched in the gut. But to me, moving 1500 miles farther away, even though it is temporary, is a big deal.
I think the second reason I am so destabilized is that this solidifies that he has no intention of taking any action to try to bring us together sooner rather then later (i.e. job hunting!). That is probably the biggest blow to me. Being in a LDR is a two-lane highway. It takes two people to make it work and two people to work towards reuniting. I know I may have to move and quit my job and forfeit everything I have established here. However, whenever I talk about that, he stops me and says he does not want me to quit or lose what I have here. He talked non-stop over Labor Day weekend about finding a job here, and maybe even being up here as soon as Thanksgiving, and no action has been taken to follow up on those musings.
The third reason I am upset about this news is that we now have a time difference to navigate with already busy schedules. Anyone that has ever had to navigate a time difference will know how frustrating this can be. Thank God it is only two hours, but that two hours can still make a huge difference in the quality and quantity of our conversations, which have already been suffering for a long time. Not only that, but now it is a new routine to try to figure out. Bedtime for him may be before I even arrive home some evenings, so squeezing in a conversation that actually feels like we are connecting is going to be a challenge, especially since he refuses to use other modes of communicating because of his work schedule. And once we finally have it figured out, he will be back in Orange County, and then possibly moving to Victorville. Do we know when? No. No dates are set. No plans can be made. This will no doubt be another bomb dropped on me that I apparently am not entitled to have any feelings about.
So as I type, Richard is somewhere between Las Vegas and Denver heading towards Kansas City (yes by car, no less.) I basically feel like I have slowly lost my primary support person. I am lucky to have a strong support system that absorbed the brunt of the loss as it has progressed, but I just don't think that is a good sign for us in the long run. We are in desperate need of a plan, and that may be the topic of conversation over our visit next weekend. So more to come after that. For now, I will focus on breathing.

Good news, bad news

So the good news is Richard's company did not get the Chicago bid! Which means for the time being, we continue being long distance along the California coast. And that means we continue in the waiting period of not knowing when this will end, which is not a good place to be.
That is the good news out of the way. No on to the not so good news. This post is dedicated to the topic of communication. This is a huge topic when you are in a LDR, and I will likely be the herald of many more posts on the subject.
Yesterday was a very bad day for me. My mother decided to have a borderline episode on me, and I was not handling it well. I reached out to my partner for support. I tried calling him at noon. At three. At five. At seven. He did not return my calls until 9pm. He stated "Hi, I just got home from soccer." I immediatly was not pleased. I was not happy that when I needed him, he was not there for me. I work in an agency with fourteen other mental health professionals. I do not often seek support from him when I am surrounded by extremely giving, intelligent, insightful and astute people who love helping others. So when I do reach out to him, it is important. I asked him why he waited so long to call me back and he stated that this was the first time he looked at his phone. You are in a LDR and you don't look at your phone until 9pm, when you usually go to bed between 9 and 9:30? I was disappointed and a little appalled. When I brought my feelings to his attention, he stated, "Well I don't care about my phone." Which I heard as "I don't care about you." And that put him immediately on the defensive, and me into another spiral of grief. And he was no longer able to be comforting to me or show me any kind of empathy.
As far as that last statement goes, that is a personal battle we will have to address at another time. But if you are in a LDR it is not going to work without consistent communication. That phone is our lifeline. He is not on Facebook, MySpace, Gmail or any other instant messenger. He does not agree with receiving personal emails to his work email address. He does not check his personal email address at work. So the phone is our only line of communication. So for this to work, he needs to look at it, answer it, dial from it! He needs to be an active participant. A LDR will not work with only one participant. So his rebuttal, "what did people do before cell phones?" I don't know, and frankly, I don't care. I am lucky enough to be in a LDR in the age of instant communication. Honestly, people in LDRs before instant communication probably did just great with their Courier pigeons and Morse Code. That isn't who we are anymore. You have a cell phone, use it.
Like I said above, this topic is huge, and has a lot of offspring topics that will require their own posts entirely, so the subject will likely come up in many future posts. After all, what is a LDR without communication? It can't be based on sex, it can't be based on enjoying similar hobbies, it has to be based on a solid foundation and then nurtured over distance through communication, which is tough. So communication is essential, and when communication is breaking down, it won't be long until the relationship breaks up.

Looking for a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel..

And all I see is black.

So as many of you may have already heard, Richard is currently in Chicago. He has been there since last Sunday. He is there for work, preparing an estimate for a bid on a waste water treatment plant. The bid is this coming Tuesday. Richard and some of his co-workers were sent to Chicago to assist in the estimating and bidding because they are the district with the most experience in building waste water treatment plants. Sounds good so far right? So what’s the problem? The problem is that if they get the bid, Richard has agreed to move to Chicago for the project. That, my friends, is the problem.
There is a good chance that they will not get the bid, and I will hopefully be able to post such good news next time. They have not won a bid in a very long time. However, there is a chance that they will get the bid, and that leaves us…where? I do not know where it leaves us, but it leaves me gazing into the tunnel, and seeing no light whatsoever.
I am not in a place in my career where I can pack up and move to Chicago. I am in California until I am licensed, bottom line. I am not sure how long this will take, but I am doing the best that I can to make it happen as soon as possible. But even if a miracle occurred, and somehow I woke up tomorrow with my MFT license, I am not entirely sure that I would want to re-locate to Chicago. I am sure it is a fine city, but I have never been. I am not inclined to uproot my life and relocate to a place I have not even visited. A place where neither of us have friends or family, a place where my career options are less then ideal. Where the winters are cold and severe and intimidating to this California girl. Where my only social connection would be my partner, who I barely see because of the demanding and intense work hours required in heavy construction. I do not exactly have fond memories of the last waste water treatment plant building experience. Richard worked at least one Saturday per month. He frequently left for work before the sun was up, and returned from work long after the sun set, practically catatonic. He had barely enough energy to eat and crawl to bed, let alone maybe have a conversation or catch a movie. So this brings me back to my original question, this leaves us where?
Even if they do not get the Chicago bid, I am not sure where we are right now, or where we are headed. I believe our last stints long distance were much more manageable because there was an ending. There was a plan. There was something to countdown to. I used to love marking days off the calendar. I had calendars everywhere! I had a countdown on the dry-erase board in the kitchen. I had a wall calendar, a desk calendar, a planner, a calendar in my notebook for school. And I took great comfort, pleasure, and excitement in crossing off those days as they ticked by.
Now, I cross the days off with an enormous sense of sadness. It has been nearly 11 months that we have been apart. And I have no clue when it might end. I really need to see that hint of light soon.