She Had Reminded Me of Love
and all the beauties that come with being with your loved one
Excitement wasn’t an emotion I allowed myself to feel as the days reached single digits before I was finally reunited with my girlfriend. I had not seen her in nearly eleven months.
‘You must be over the moon!’
‘I bet you two can’t wait!’
- The voices of loved ones and work colleagues would shriek.
‘Yeah, it’s going to be great!’
- I’d mutter under an artificial grin.
The two-and-a-half-hour drive to the airport felt calm, composed. I soaked up the countryside scenery on route, appreciating the individual characteristics of the rural cottages along the way.
It wasn’t because I was trying to avoid the situation, or had become too nervous about being in each other’s company. It certainly wasn’t because I didn’t want to see her.
In fact, we had spoken every day since parting our ways in January. From the very beginning, long-distance has been the crux to our relationship, the duration stretched further due to this year’s pandemic.
Being in different continents have meant we cannot even determine when we’d next see each other, let alone flirt with the idea of one day living together. Our ability to remain together, therefore, has surprised our close families and friends.
‘It must be so hard’
‘I don’t know how you two do it’
I’ve since had a few days to digest my initial feelings during the lead-up to our reunion, and why that excitement never came about.
My lack of excitement stemmed from the complacency I felt living alone.
From the beginning, my coping mechanism has been to pro-actively fill our time apart by working overtime on top of a 60-hour work week, and initiate extra-curricular activities. To a certain degree, I have almost become a robot in my everyday lifestyle, mentally ticking off the number of podcast episodes I’ve listened to, the hours spent learning a language, and other metrics I’ve assigned to signal productivity.
Our reunion meant I had to return to a level of… tenderness? To become a companion not just via online communication, but to be present in the moment and not live selfishly.
As if starved from certain feelings and emotions, our cohabitation has made me hyper-sensitive to how I approach each day. On what were previously trivial decisions, such as deciding what to have for dinner, I find myself taking a pensive thought to select something that would light up her eyes.
On other occasions, I would automatically disengage in the engrossed task just to check in on her as she took an afternoon nap. Sometimes I may only do as little as a gentle kiss on her cheek, replenish her mug with warm water and leave a small piece of chocolate by her bedside, before gingerly closing the door to return downstairs.
Having my girlfriend here with me has been the much-needed shake-up from the chaos of work life. Flowers, which I never buy when alone, get given fresh water when the vase becomes cloudy. The dining table is instantly cleared to make room for a shared dessert. I have come to embrace these new habits, introduced only through our reunion, that give colour to my usual lifestyle.
I had forgotten about the small beauties of living with your loved one, and for that, I had become nonchalant in the lead-up. But as we rediscover what it is like to be in the company of one another, our energies bounce off of each other with belly-aching laughs.
As 2020 came to an end, she had reminded me of love.
