Almost at the end!

I graduate university in just over a month and of course have very mixed feelings about this. I'm excited, yet terrified. Excited because I've felt very disenchanted with my degree and experience at university. I really don't know how my degree is going to aid me in terms of finding a good job, or prepare me for the industry I'll one day go into, but at the same time university really has been incredibly cruisy for me. I "study" for eight months of the year, and the other four I spend either travelling or just sitting back doing pretty much nothing. And yet I've still felt incredibly trapped by university, that I have all these things I want to do but am unable to because of my study commitments. But whether I like it or not, that's all about to change.

Change seems to be playing a very large role in my life right now. Not just with my studies, but also with my relationship with my partner. He flies to Australia in just three weeks, his first time here ever, and thus the first time he'll meet my family and my friends. I'm excited yet terribly nervous about how it's all going to go down. I just want him to have the most amazing time possible in my home country. But of course the same old question creeps up of what will happen once he heads home to the US. I seem to fall in the same trap every time we part; I plan to have our relationship and the barriers within our relationship fully established before we part, but always end up not achieving this and being left confused and unsure about our status. I have a few options on my hand; I could follow him back to the US for a few months, then spend summer in Australia, and try my best to get a working visa for 2012, or I could stay in Australia and just try to find a job, but still hopefully end up in the US in 2012. It's mostly just the six months after graduation that I'm most unsure about. But in the past I've somehow been able to figure out my path and just have everything fall into place, so here's hoping I have the same results this year.

I'm super excited for the future and what it'll bring me. It's daunting, sure, but it's also a mystery, and I definitely think this year will be one to remember.

Stateside

Well I'm back in the good ol' US of A, finally!

I got here two weeks ago. After seven long, long, long months of waiting and a killer 32-hour flight from Perth to New York City via Sydney and San Francisco, J and I were finally reunited.

I find it interesting now to reflect back on my experiences April-November of this year. When I first left the US I was an absolute wreck and just couldn't cope with the prospect of not seeing J until November at the earliest. I even feel perhaps a little ashamed of just how badly I coped back then and that it took me so long to get back to 'normal'. But the months slowly slipped by in Germany and then before I knew it I was back in Australia after 13 months abroad. And now it's December and I'm back in Connecticut, USA... scary how time flies, huh?

So I have three months in the US before I'll return to Australia to finish the last semester of my degree. So I guess all I can wish for right now is that I make the most of my time here and hope that I won't be too affected (like I was before) when I leave. I know I'll be upset of course - that's something that can't be avoided - I just hope that I'll be able to cope better. What scares me now is that I don't know what will happen with J and I. Will we stay together? Will we make plans to be together after we graduate? Or will we just call it a day and leave it at that? All I really know, is that I'm sick of long distance. It's exhausting. I love and adore J with all my heart, and all I want is to be with him, so I'm more than willing to make the commitment. I guess it's just up to him if he can do the same.

Here's hoping.

Blahhh...

I hate it when I have bad, feel-sorry-for-myself days... like I am today :(

I'm just feeling very disenchanted with my life right now. I'm so incredibly lonely up here in the city, not just because I miss J, but I feel like everything has changed so much whilst I was living in Germany, and now I just don't really have anything in common with my friends anymore.

I barely see my friends actually. At college I have perhaps two mates that I'll see regularly, but they both have such busy schedules that we never actually do anything outside college. All my other friends from back home live all over Perth and not having a car makes it difficult for visits.

I just miss my life in Germany... it was such an adventure and every single day there was always something to do, people to see, new places to discover - and I miss that terribly. I miss all the friends that I made overseas and just wish I could fly back already!

Not only that but I'm just so incredibly bored up here. All I do is study/work/hit the gym and it's just this never-ending cycle of boringness. I miss being challenged. I miss not knowing what's going to happen that day. All I spend my time doing now is desperately looking for things to make the day go quicker... which is not how I want to live my life.

I'm also terrified of what's going to happen after I leave the US next February, whether J and I will stay together, because unfortunately right now that doesn't look like it will happen. So now I need to plan for a life that doesn't involve J... and the thought of that kind of life doesn't make me happy one bit.

I just don't know what to do :(

I wish I could just feel better already and move on with my life!

YAY!

Finally... I am officially going back to the States on November 21!

Booked tickets on Tuesday... cost me around $1,800 (yikes!), but totally worth it! I'll be there until February 19, so that's a good three months I'll get with my boy! I'm so excited, it feels wonderful to finally have an official date that we can look forward to... :)

It's been a long four (and a bit) months, but now we only have around just 2.5 months until the wait is over and we'll see each other again... bring on November!

:)

Whoops...

So I actually forgot I started this...

... although I must admit it's pretty interesting for me to read my post from over three months ago and compare what I was feeling back then to how I am feeling now.

It's been almost four months since I saw my SO... let's just call him J to make it easier. So yeah, it'll have been four months since I left the US on the 26th of this month. Unfortunately, we still have no 'official' date for when we will see each other again. But to help me get through the distance and loneliness I've been using November 22 as an approximate day. Which is 99 days away :) I'm not sure why having a count down makes me feel better or helps me to cope better with the whole situation - I guess just knowing there's a definite date we'll be together again gives me hope that we'll make it in the end. Plus being able to cross off one more day every morning is always fun :D

My last couple of months in Germany after leaving the US were pretty fun. I'd planned lots and lots of trips to keep myself busy as I knew I'd be absolutely miserable initially and would crave to have escape from monotony. My trips included Stuttgart, the capital of Baden-Wuerttemberg, for the beer festival Fruehlingsfest (Spring Festival - just imagine spending the entire day dancing on tables to German music with huge 1L glasses of beer in your hands); Vienna, Austria; Croatia; Italy; and finally London, England. The trips were great, as well as exhausting, but they certainly helped to distract me from missing J so much. I'll admit though, the first six weeks or so were incredibly tough. I was absolutely devastated and simply could not accept that I wouldn't see J for such a long, long time. It affected me emotionally AND physically. I couldn't eat or sleep for weeks, nor would I socialise or attempt to make new friends. I just locked myself in a small, cramped prison of misery and refused to come out. I'm not entirely sure if there was a defining moment where I realised what I was doing was stupid and I couldn't keep going on like that; maybe it was the realisation that I was in Germany for God's sake and should be having the time of my life? Or that I shouldn't have to rely on another person for my happiness, that I needed to be independent and work on achieving my own goals? For whatever reason, I eventually got better and learned to cope with being by myself.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, the days soon whizzed by and it was time for me to return back to Australia after 13 months of living overseas. I must admit I was feeling pretty bittersweet about it all. I was incredibly excited about seeing my family and friends after so long, but I was dreading leaving Germany and the life I had made there. I had spent years planning this trip, and I was just in a state of shock that the adventure was over already. But before I knew it, I was walking through the terminal doors at Perth International Airport with my mum running towards me, hands outstretched and tears streaming down her face.
I was home.

It's been almost four weeks since that day and I think I'm settling in pretty well, a part from being sick the initial two weeks haha. I guess all I hope for now is to survive this semester and look forward to when I'll see J again (roll on 22 Nov!). I really want to book a flight to the US in the next month that's for sure... I'm over living in the 'unknown' already, I've already had almost four months of it and I want out! But at least I've made it to the half way point relatively unscathed...

I guess I'll just have to see what the future brings.

A new beginning...

So this is officially my very first blog.

I'm not exactly sure where to start, but I guess a little bit of background information couldn't hurt.
I'm from Western Australia and currently living in Germany on exchange. Since January 2009 I have been in a long distance relationship (LDR) with an American boy who I met in Germany.
I guess what I wanted to do was to create my own little world that I could occasionally retreat to, to post my thoughts, feelings, fears, triumphs all in one place that I could constantly return to and reflect upon. And who knows, maybe help others in a similar situation to mine along the way.
I could have started something like this much earlier, but only the events of the past week really got me thinking about starting my own blog.

Last week I said goodbye to my significant other (SO). I flew over to the US from Germany in mid February of this year to spend some time with him whilst I was on a break. I was there until the end of April. This was my second time visiting him in the states. Last time I was there was in September 2009, where I spent five weeks there meeting his friends and all his family. Me spending 2.5 months there this time around certainly seemed like a long, long time, but I was so excited for it. I couldn't wait for the feeling of being in his arms again, of going to sleep with him by my side and his face being the first thing I saw every morning when I woke up. But I knew it would all be over before I knew it. And it was.

Saying goodbye to my SO last week was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Sure, we have had to go through the whole goodbye process a few times now, but this was so much more difficult in the sense that we don't know when we can see each other again. The distance, the cost of flying and our conflicting school schedules has made it very complicated for the both of us. The earliest we could see each other unfortunately is not until mid-November this year, which is just under seven months away. Seven long, long months. And even then we are still not sure if we could afford the airfare (as I will be back in Australia by this point which makes it even more expensive). The thought of not seeing each other for so long has devastated us both, and I've been struggling to cope this past week in particular since I left. The loneliness, the pain from missing my SO so much and the inability to accept the fact that I wouldn't be able to feel his touch for so long was just completely debilitating. I couldn't sleep, eat or function in any normal way. I was in a completely tortured state with no clear way of how I was going to pull myself out of this dark hole.

And yet, a week later, the pain is slowly starting to heal. Like people kept reminding me, time heals all pain, right? But even though as time continues to pass the pain of missing my SO and not being with him will subside, I feel there will always be empty space in my heart where he should be. I'm always going to miss him. I'm always going to wish he was here with me and experiencing the same things as I. I guess all we can do now is slowly work through the heartache of being in a LDR. To remain strong as the months go by. And hopefully one day we will have a specific date when we are going to see each other again of which we can both look forward to.

But until then, life goes on.