Long Distance (Part 3): Oh sweet sacrifice

Long Distance (Part 3): Oh sweet sacrifice

To all my loyal readers, who read the previous two posts concerning the subject of long distance relationships; I bring you the epic conclusion regarding this matter.

I am not going to say this is the last part or the end, because it has such a negative connotation, we still need time as this new experience just started. However, I can say that after a rocky start, stability has been reached and that is why this moment has been chosen to publish the last part (last part for now at least).

       First I will share my ideas about making the distance closer:

Indeed we have to be thankful for the new technology at hand, no need to wait weeks for a letter by postal service or lonesome expensive phone calls every couple of weeks. Now we can all be connected on a daily basis, every second.

A smartphone is all you need, you can text for free over data coverage or Wi-Fi, using apps such as Whatsapp and free call using Viber or Kakao talk and even video call via Tango or Skype. So use it wisely, there are so many ways to stay in touch and feel them closer to you.

At night, set at least 2 days per week where it is about just the two of you, video call on Skype or Google hangout on your laptop, communicate, share your days, and maybe even watch a movie on screen share. Call this your dating night, and figure fun ways to stay close, like sharing the same dinner and talking as if out on a real date…

A fatal error would be to get caught in the new situation and forget to make time for each other’s, then you will slowly get over whelmed with work and social life, forgetting along the way that one person that matters the most. Do not let them fade away and become just a memory!

     Secondly, a relationship as a two party concept is like a scale, it has to be in perfect harmony and balance. Both parties have to make the effort, you may both want the relationship to work and flourish but when one has to make extra efforts to keep everything from falling apart. They will be afraid of failure, and in a constant state of fear that they still can do more or what they are sacrificing is not enough.

On the off chance that you are in neighboring countries or relatively close, try saving up money every month so that you may be able to visit each other’s every couple of months.

 If not, be tolerant of the new situation, and communicate as much as you can because the root of all problems is miscommunication and dishonesty, trully loneliness is hard but two loving hearts are never alone and cheating is never the answer, it will satisfy a momentary urge but will leave you an empty vessel and carrying a burden. Is it worth throwing years together for a simple weak moment? Fight and keep on fighting for the one you love.

Remember all those great love songs, you are still the one, viva forever, love story, died in your arms… they weren't written in vain.  

My honest opinion how I would feel in a long distance relationship?

I would be envious and jealous of the people that get to see you every day.

A thousand miles seems pretty far but they've got planes, trains and boats and if I had no other way I would walk to you.

       In the end, the truly scary questions to ask yourselves are two:

Can you pick up from where you left?

Will separation make your love stronger or weaker?

I for one am sure whatever happens, I can forgive and love because I know my future is you and after this cloud there is sun, there is a paradise waiting for the both of us to live together happily ever after.

True Self-Sacrifice of Love

By William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

NO longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly, sullen bell Give notice to the world that I am fled From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell: Nay, if you read this line, remember not 5 The hand that writ it; for I love you so, That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, If thinking on me then should make you woe. Oh! if, I say, you look upon this verse, When I perhaps compounded am with clay, 10 Do not so much as my poor name rehearse, But let your love even with my life decay; Lest the wise world should look into your moan, And mock you with me after I am gone.

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Long Distance (part 2): Living with a ghost

Long distance (part 2): Living with a ghost

         Now they are gone for good, you realize deep down that nothing will ever be the same.

The comfort, the warmth, the joys and sadness were all tied to that presence, to that single person whom you might have taken for granted but now came to acknowledge their huge impact on your life.

They have left, and all you have now is a ghost, you are living with a ghost inside your head.

At every corner, memories come to haunt you, there you used to go for dinner, here was your favorite sport… you got used to being constantly with them that unconsciously their road has become your road home.  You still pass by their house, then realize they are no longer living in the same country, indeed they are thousands of miles away for you.

You wish you could go into the room one more time, sit where they used to sit, feel their presence, let their scent tickle your face and nose, relive those precious moments.

How can time pass so quickly when you are together? The years pass like days; whereas when apart time seems to freeze as if to prolong your agony.

Emptiness, bitterness and sorrow, you try to make new memories and say we had Beirut and we still have a promising future…but when one is still living in the past in Beirut and when the other moved to a new country to the future: you grasp the harshness of the situation and its complexity. If one is living in the past and the other in the future, where is the present? No one is living the present, steps have been skipped and the equations are unbalanced now.

Love is not something taken, it is given. Although you considered yourself to be rational rather than emotional, you quickly come to realize how weak a human can be, in those dark hours before going to bed, when the loneliness takes over you cannot hold your tears anymore. The masks fall off and you are vulnerable, the only substantial hope is hoping to see their face one more time, after a month, 6 months or a year.

Will we be the same? Can we pick up the broken pieces and move on? Love is strong but when stretched over continents a rupture may occur.

You want to move forward and you know that in time you will get used to the situation but you cannot help yourself but linger on old pictures, every piece of clothes, every smell, every place you have been, all the memories. One thing is sure, you cannot forget even if you try.

      Finally, each partner copes differently with the new situation at hand, each at their own pace. The hardest part will be if one side of the scale tips over and one seem to be further ahead than the other.

You are not here physically anymore, you are in my heart in my every thought, and you are my memories.

You are the ghost that haunts me every night, the one that puts me to sleep and the one that wakes me up screaming for your name.

End of part 2

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How long can you go (part 1)

How long can you go? (Part 1)

Anybody who undertook a long distance relationship will tell it is not easy at all, even damn near impossible. So it is up to you whether to give it a chance or not to even fight for the relationship.

How and why it happens is not entirely under our control, it could be a job opportunity, a permanent relocation to another country or maybe meeting someone online form another continent.

Many circumstances can potentially lead us to consider a long distance relationship, my friend is travelling abroad, and that is why I am inspired by his loved one to write their story and to help them through this new experience.

There will be follow up posts, tips and facts about long distance relationships because it is a wide subject and in order to expose all the aspects and points of view more than one post is necessary.

How long can you go? Meaning how many miles can you be apart and for how long?

Needless to say that when either one of those elements increases; the stakes become higher and the long distance relationship turn into a hustle.

In the end, to finish my first post about this subject, I am going to highlight

"Missing someone gets easier every day because even though you are one day further from the last time you saw them, you are one day closer to the next time you will." 

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Something gotta change

Something gotta change

Sitting alone in a bed, going for a midnight stroll alone or simply daydreaming; we find ourselves shifting our focus and thoughts towards what has been and what will be.

We seem to drift our attention from our present to contemplate an uncertain future or reminisce about our past. While the future is ever shifting and each decision will lead us on a different path, the past remains our nostalgic timeline where we might regret a certain decision. 

What happened to the present? I like many others, forget to live the current moment and dwell on past glory or promising future.

Sometimes you try to preoccupy yourself from the present as to overlook uncomfortable situations or avoid conflicts: you see people working hard whereas some hardly work. Some take undeserved credits, others waste their time at work.

When you used to matter for a friend, and all of sudden everything is more important than you. What was intended to be yours is no more, everything and everyone is replaceable. When they realize they can actually live without you and slowly drift away.

The sad truth is we frequently let ourselves live a hollow lie and be deceived because it is easier to let ourselves believe it than confronting someone, walking away or just leaving.

Nobody is daring admitting it to the other person, but change is coming and more accurately something need to change.  I want to be everything at once, unfortunately it is not possible and a specific part of your life will eventually take the upper hand.

We seem impervious to learning, when the same problems keep rotating and happening over and over; it is turned back to you. It’s your fault, it’s your move and it’s your choice.

Emotionally there for everybody, but when the time comes and it’s you who is in need few will answer your call and come to the rescue.  Why should they; if you set a pattern of you being a shoulder to cry on, a confidant and advisor every single time they need you. I guess it means you’re a super human and on the rare few occasions where you might be sad or angry nobody bothers asking.

It is flabbergasting how people can react differently with their surroundings: same time, same situation and problems only a different person to interact with. One person will be told all the sad part, the worries and anger whereas the second one will get the happy part and sunshine. What makes that person eligible to get ether part, shouldn't all your friends be treated equally? How come one gets consistently the negative while around other people it’s only rainbows?

Final thought before closing this chapter, if you delete it, it doesn't mean it is forgotten, whether it is a pic, a person, a situation you are trying to avoid… the physical fragment might be dissolved but the damage it has done is permanent, your life doesn't have a reset button. 

A wound can heal so many times, till it leaves a scar, a reminder that while it may have healed you will always carry a part of that trauma with you wherever you go.

          Finally, I am reminded of the immortal words of Mahatma Gandhi: be the change you wish to see in the world. Don’t expect others to change, quite the contrary be that change because you are incredible.

I recently stumbled upon this great but not so known song: Gravitonas-Incredible (Youtube) and I used to think that the phrase “you should know that you’re so incredible” meant someone else, but realized it actually can refer to yourself and not somebody else.

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My life:the music

My life: the music

      Has it ever happened to you? When you are in a specific state of mind or emotion, you hear a perfect song that fits your needs. It is as if the singer is giving words to your feelings and materializing them.

It hit me when through a rough patch I heard coincidentally a song by Taylor swift:” Knew you were trouble” (  Youtube link )

Haven’t we all done it before? Whether it’s a relationship or not, deep down you feel instinctively that this situation might have a negative outcome yet you go through with it.

I agree mostly, it’s applicable to relationships: you say why not, or let’s see where this is going and out of the blue you find yourself inseparable form that person. When at the beginning you were pretty sure it was trouble, the sad part is you get attached against your best judgment and try not to over think about the outcome till it happens.

A fight or problem will leave you vulnerable because you went in too deep after you promised yourself you won’t.

On another note, I have noticed that these coincidences are very frequent with me, in good and bad occasions.  However, the last time it happened to me it was almost an infinite loop: in the car and especially in the restaurant where I was having diner, I was bombarded with songs such as: Someone like you (Adele), Titanium (David Guetta), Trust you again (Muttonheads)… All that while trying to talk about the relationship and the outcome on my date.

Furthermore, we tend to find ourselves in the same situation at work: out of need or routine you stick to a job you may not really like since there a no other opportunities in the near future.  Why you may ask?

In both cases it is the fear of the unknown, when get accustomed to a certain pattern it becomes your comfort zone, you try to make it work and patch it up even if you know at one point something broken cannot really be fixed over and over.

     In the end, it will take courage for that leap, to try and escape because in the unknown may be a great opportunity. However, if you are still trying to make it last and solving every problem separately it could mean also that you know it is worth it, it is worth fighting once more for what you believe is a key component to your happiness. 

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Happy holidays

Happy holidays

        Season’s greetings to all my readers: whether it is Christmas, Hanukah or Kwanzaa.  Happy holidays to all, it is the time of year to be grateful for what we have.

To each the holidays have a different meaning and festive traditions, but I would like to think that we can all agree on the basics.

Personally, I enjoy unwrapping gifts as much as the next guy but moving on; Christmas is not just about gifts and stuffing ourselves with food. It is much more: when you put other people’s need before yours that is Christmas. When you help the needy, put thoughts into your gifts and make somebody smile, that’s Christmas.

It is the time of year to be unselfish, and gather with family and friends, especially the ones you haven’t seen for a while.

On the other hand, New Year marks a new beginning, a new chance and a blank page to fill it with new experiences.  At the beginning of 2012, my blog was launched and this January will mark the one year anniversary.

From 3 views for the first day, I have reached 3000 this month and the list of readers is still growing. Therefore, seize the chance to follow your dreams, and to take a risk or maybe a new project, there is no failure just experiences.

We don’t have to wait for New Year to start making our resolutions, every day is a new chance. However, ending a year is like ending a chapter: we are motivated to start a new one and eager to see what will unfold. So naturally, we are more likely to commit after New Year when we contemplate about all past events.

In the end, this will be my last post for this year, I hope all my readers have enjoyed my posts and I would like to thank you for being loyal throughout this year and keeping me motivated to write.  

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How (un)Lucky are you?

How (un)Lucky are you?

        Before you get out your horse shoe or start looking for that four leaves clover, let me start by saying that there is a difference between luck and superstition.

Luck is a conception of probability and optimism whereas superstition is a mere misconception and irrational beliefs.  

In my case I guess it is a mixture of luck and sheer weirdness, I am going to start by stating the latest incidents that happened to me and get back in time as far as I can remember.

I recently bought a new phone, so I transferred the memory card containing all my photos and music from my old phone to the new one. I had the same memory card for more than 2 years, I bought it supposedly new. Why I said supposedly? Because when I transferred it to my new phone I found out while going through my pictures that there was a file named X that was unseen on my old phone.

In that file I was shocked to see over 470 pictures of nude or semi nude guys and girls. Where the hell did it come from? And who the heck has time to collect this amount of pictures.

Fine, moving on as I mentioned in my previous post I wanted to change my internet connection, the best option was DSL which required a jumpering of the phone line.  Don’t know what is that exactly, in short your phone line needs to be adapted to support data transfer.

However, I was the only customer in the entire 6 years history of the company to get a wrong jumepring, which resulted in 3 days of no phone line.

On a brighter side, I recently wanted to enter a radio competition to win a voucher for a new clothes store.  Having never done such a thing before and not believing I would win I decided to try my beginner’s luck so I sent the right answer alongside a smiley and a “hope I win” and 5 minutes later I hear my name on the radio.

To cut it short, I’m going to end it with a work related conclusion: as a sales representative for an international company I have a daily contact with different clients. One particular client, apparently liked my voice on the phone and he bought our product and requested I deliver it in person to” meet”.

How would you feel, if you enter their office to see your Facebook page opened on their screen and they ask you “oh you have changed your pic recently”. Awkward moment or what, I felt that I am being monitored 24/7.

Finally, another person admired my personality and work ethics but instead of harassing me they did what a sane person would do: we talked and they actually introduced me to HR manager and wanted me to submit my CV but I was happy with my job and wasn’t keen on transferring to a new company.

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