Holidays!

Picture: Eddee

I have never been to East Asia. This may come as a surprised and have been reading my blog for a while since 99% of my dates in the last year come from somewhere there. But I haven’t.

It was P who made me think of going to Thailand first, same reason why I started learning to cook some Thai food and attended a few Thai festivals. Then came M and reinforced that.

So it won’t be a surprise that I am going there. Leaving tomorrow for 18 days. I’ll be visiting Bangkok, then Phuket, then Koh Phi Phi and finally Hong Kong.

So don’t expect me to post much, I may have some time to do it but it won’t come with the usual picture attached. I followed someone’s advice and created some accounts on a few websites I was told are used by locals, besides gaydar I added gayromeo and Fridae. Good thing is I have now more people I could meet than days. Bad thing is I shouldn’t see so many people at all. So we’ll see how it goes but at least I won’t spend the evenings on my own in a hotel.

More to come.

Breaking hearts

Well, it’s been a bit busy lately so I needed to post an update before it’s too late… and things have changed quite a bit.

In my last post I talked about H, sweet H. The days after my visit were quite intense but things turned much more intense during the weekend… Towards the end of the week we had started to chat more often although not quite the same intensity as before the trip, all in line with our intention to let things cool off a bit. But things took quite a turn on Sunday.

At some point of our chat H was hesitant about asking something. I told him to go ahead and ask whatever was on his mind. And  then came the bomb. He told me he had fallen in love and wanted to see if we could have a long distance relationship with a view to move to London at some point in the future.

I was quite convinced that it was not a good idea, but my feelings for him were quite strong and his declaration overwhelmed me. I knew he had some feelings but didn’t know he would want to go as far as that. In all the time we were together or chatted the word love was never mentioned and when he did this time it really affected me.

But my memories of a long-distance relationship aren’t good. And for all we seemed to click we had only been together for 4 days and two evenings. It seemed a bit too little for a commitment like that.  And when he had mentioned before that he may have a chance to study in London it was something like a year and a half away, too far. I thought it would only end up frustrating us and hurting us more but I couldn’t quite give him an answer that day. We agreed I would the following day. He didn’t want to speak on the phone or a video call nor even a chat. He wanted me to do it by email.

So I thought about it all Monday and decided that I couldn’t commit to that, it wouldn’t be fair on any of us. In the evening we opened a chat window on MSN but not to talk, just to let each other know when the emails were being sent.

I sent him a long one explaining why I thought it wouldn’t be a good idea. Then I let him know. He then replied to mine with a new one called “Then that’s it”. He had decided that it hurt him too much and he didn’t want me to get in touch with him at all, he wanted his time to heal and when he healed he them may contact me again. Maybe. He had a couple of questions, which I then replied and then he let me know he had received it and that was it.

Gosh, how I cried. It was so hard and it hurt so much, and his hard-felt words made me feel terrible. I was shattering his hopes and that hurt me even more. I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to speak to him again and knew he would be having a terrible time and I wouldn’t be able to do anything.

The following days were also really hard. I constantly wondered about him, what he’d be doing, how he’d be feeling… having been in touch so much and so often and then not hearing anything at all made it worse too.

He used to blog every day, and the days after there was no update at all, the same on Facebook. After some day he started posting but not the usual cheerful posts. They were a lot darker, shorter and mostly about nice memories from the past. Reading them and reading between the lines was so heartbreaking.

I tried to do the usual things, go out etc but I wasn’t quite the same. Didn’t feel like going on any date and wasn’t interested in anyone when I went out. My friend J kept telling me I wasn’t the same.

Then last week, I was home not feeling very week on a Friday evening. I was playing on the xbox when I hear someone was trying to chat on my MSN. I had a look and it was him. He said something in Norwegian, then a “damn”. He’d made a mistake and sent me a message instead of someone else. But that was enough to start chatting…

We chatted for 4 hours. The first half was very hard, he was clearly bitter and kept lashing at me but I tried not to react negatively. After about two hours I thought it was enough and hinted it was probably time to sleep since we weren’t doing much progress. Then he changed a bit and didn’t want to end it like that, from that moment things started to change and became much more positive. I was delighted. We even talked about the possibility of seeing each other in the future when he was feeling better.

The days after we kept in touch, mostly by email with a renewed agreement of keeping things cool. He told me he found out that despite his pain he had realised that he felt even worse not knowing about me, and so did I.

Since then things have been a bit better each time. And finally he told me about his original idea of meeting again just before Christmas. We’ve discussed it and he’s now booked it! He will be here for 4 nights staying with me. Unfortunately I work some of those days but it will be nice to come home and find him there. I haven’t done that for a while.

But of course I worry about it, we could be repeating the same story but I hope we both understand our feelings better and can avoid the same situation. It is a risk we both have thought about and want to take.

What a week

What a week, so intense. Just as I mentioned earlier I finally went to Oslo to see H last weekend for a four day weekend. And everything has been so intense since…

During all this time we have kept chatting every day, exchanging long text messages during the day and long chat sessions during the evenings, and lately video calls for hours. So we were both really looking forward to meet again.

I arrived there mid day on Thursday and left on Sunday afternoon. During the four days we did a few things, but most of the time we spent it at home. I had no interest to see Oslo, just to see H. And there are things you can’t do while visiting Oslo…

We did go out a couple of days to have a coffee, do some shopping, watch a movie plus a lunch and a dinner. The rest of the time we spent it in his room. Four wonderful days when we concentrated on each other. Not a single second seemed wasted.

H is a wonderful person, he’s full of energy, he’s intelligent, funny, witty, sweet… I loved just being in bed cuddling and kissing him for long periods. I hadn’t had such a romantic time for so many years and it was wonderful. Normally when I meet any of my dates things are over the morning after until the next time, in this case it was 3 nights and four heartfelt days.

He has a quirky taste in clothes, not quite my thing, but he loves it, he even blogs about it and seems to have quite some followers. But I didn’t care, I was with him and that’s all I wanted.

We hardly spend any time without having each other in sight. He cooked one night one of his student-life ready meals and the last night I did the cooking, which we ate lit by candles over a bottle of wine. I have some great funny pictures as memories.

The last day was very different though. Over all this time before we had already discussed that we’d have to have a serious conversation at the end of the weekend. We both knew what it would be about, that we live in different places and that despite liking each other and having spent such wonderful time together we couldn’t continue like that from the distance.

So when we woke up on Sunday the air was so different. We had been up till very late and had no plans for the rest of the day until my flight. We woke up slowly, cherishing what we knew would be the last moments before the happiness would be broken by the cruel reality.

He took some pictures while we cuddled in bed. They’re beautiful, they’re sort of blurry and overexposed giving them a dreamy feeling, just how I remember it. I have looked at them some many times since then.

He started the talk, and pretty much did it all. I felt heartbroken and couldn’t speak much, just agree and reinforce what he was saying. We talked about him visiting me the days before Christmas again as another beautiful weekend, but with the agreement that if any of us found someone else we’d tell each other immediately and cancel it.

The rest of the day was so sad. We tried to be as upbeat as we could but there was a dense atmosphere, dreading the fact that the dream was reaching its end and we would soon be apart again.

He came to say goodbye to the airport, we had a brief kiss, our last kiss, before the security check. Then he left while I queued. Minutes later he sent a message saying he had to leave as it would have been too sad.

The days since have been so different. We did agree we wouldn’t chat so much, we had been doing it so much and we thought it would be a good idea to calm down. I couldn’t help but to think about him all the time, wondering what he was doing, missing his messages telling me what he was up to or how he was feeling.

When we started exchanging messages again it was so intense, my eyes watering. He said some really beautiful things that really touched me.

Towards the end of the week we have started to chat a bit more often and even been on messenger and video-calling again. But we’re trying not to be too intense, what we need is the opposite or it’ll be harder for both.

He hasn’t really posted anything new on his blog, just some old pictures remembering some happy old times, I think he’s suffering.

I don’t regret anything though. We both wanted to have those four wonderful days even though we knew the aftermath would be hard. I feel so lucky I met someone like H, he’ll always have a place in my heart, it just seems cruel that we’re separated by the ocean.

What’s worse? having had something precious and lost it, or not having had that chance? I would normally tend to say the latter; you can’t miss what you didn’t have. But in this case I prefer the former, the memories of the wonderful time we had will always be with me, and the pain will fade sometime…