littlestar

i just wanted to lament how this happened. mind you, i think it's a good relationship and that's why i've been in it so long. but would i have gotten myself into this had i known that it would be long distance for 5 years? i got to thinking about this because of some friends of mine.

basically, it was the frog in boiling water syndrome. for those of you who aren't familiar.... when trying to boil a frog (i haven't tried this, i've only heard of it) you have to start with it in the pot of water as it is heating up. the frog isn't very bright, so it won't notice the that the water is getting hotter steadily because the change will be imperceptible to it and it will boil to death because it doesn't have the sense to jump out. however, if you try to throw in the frog into boiling water, it will jump right out because it will actually notice how hot the stinkin' water is.

not that i'm boiling to death here. i think we're good for each other. some times it's easier to drive him to the airport to drop him off. but other times... it just plain old fucking sucks.

oh yeah... did i mention depressing? depressing, too.

when parakkum and i got together... well, we didn't really think it through that much. he was leaving soon (having graduated and all) and i was going to start my second year in college, so it was a make the best of the time we have kind of situation.

once he left, we decided to stay together because we liked each other and it was worth trying for a long distance relationship while we still liked each other.

by the time we were getting more serious with each other we were talking about doing the long distance thing until i finished college, after which i could head down to san diego either as a med school student or a research slave until i get into med school. we were looking at 2-2.5 years of long distance.

for some reason (probably because i liked him that much) 2.5 years seemed doable. it didn't seem that bad. and honestly... we weren't getting tired of the situation then. we were ok with a visit every 6 weeks or so. a phone call maybe once a week with lotsa chatting online.

well... the 2.5 year plan changed a little when i decided against med school and try some art classes for another year at cal.

when i decided to go for the second bachelor's... i thought i could do it at san diego state. then it would just be 3.5 years of long distance, right?

this sort of got derailed when san diego state and various other socal state school decided they weren't taking second bachelor's anymore. which turned out to be ok overall, since san jose state has a great program and i've made good friends here.

still... that put me at 3.5 years of long distance without any sight of when the thing would get local until parakkum finished his phd.

today... we're at 5 years of long distance. and i'm glad to say that we're soon approaching the end of this period. which is good. but the last couple months have been a little frustrating.

since parakkum has been working on his dissertation, i haven't been able to talk to him that much. then i was in la or in korea. or he was in vermont. or or or. etc etc etc.

originally, i thought he would be able to make it up here by end of summer. as of august, when people asked when parakkum would be getting up to the bay area, i said 1-1.5 months.

now in mid september, i'm still saying 1-1.5 months.

i'm thinking that it will probably end up being around november before he gets to the bay area.

it just ends up feeling like an endless cycle of extending that day when we'll be together again... just when i think that we're almost done being challenged by distance, the time just gets extended some more.

then i feel pissed off at being strung along and being given false hopes, except there's no one to blame. it's not parakkum's fault. it's not mine. it's just situation.

i guess i get back to the "would i have entered into this relationship had someone told a 19-year-old me that i will be doing long distance for 5 years?" question. hmmm... that's a tough one. i don't know. i love parakkum and i love that we're good for and good to each other. i think the 19-year-old would have been too young and scared to go for it. i guess, in the end, i needed to be strung along to have enough patience and forced to just go along with it, learning about how to love someone and how to deal with issues and communicating things the way i truly feel, without all the pretenses. as a 19-year-old, i just didn't have those skills available to me yet... my anxieties would have gotten the best of me.