Long Distance Love

Spending a holiday in a foreign country is a strange experience. Valentine's Day, despite being an internationally-celebrated day, falls on different days in other countries. Although today (Feb. 14th) isValentine's Day in the U.S., in Brazil it's June 12th. So, today I celebrated by myself....in my head. It makes you feel a little bit crazy to walk into a department store and not see little red hearts, boxes of chocolates and love-inspired greeting cards everywhere.

On top of that, it was the first holiday (and a rather important one for couples) the husband and I are spending apart. I'm not gonna lie-- it sucked. A lot. We tried to compensate. He sent me roses at my apartment, I sent him a card and some personalized candy, but it just wasn't the same. It wasn't even close. Because, well, let's face it-- it's a holiday about LOVE and the long distance version of love is a poor substitute for the day-to-day kind. Days like today really make me question what the hell I'm doing here and if it's really worth it. Being utterly and completely alone on Valentine's Day (when I have a perfectly good valentine) has really

brought out the girl in me. I am totally depressed.

I have never been the kind of girl who got homesick. I love my parents but I was excited to go away to college, move out, study abroad and re-locate to state over 500 miles away. I didn't ever miss the boyfriends I had during those years. I would have fun, check in and never think twice about it. The "missing" never interfered with being away from the familiar. When I met my husband, it destroyed me. I'm a sad, little bag of homesickness now. This whole situation is new territory for me. I've never felt this miserable while in the midst of an adventure. I'm now a sappy, overly-romantic cheeseball who cries during movies, while listening to songs and....at pretty much anything remotely emotional. My body literally feels achy because I miss him so much. I tried to rationalize it all away with all the good reasons for me being here, how it won't last forever, how it really isn't THAT big a deal (it's just a day), etc. No good. My brain was talking but the rest of me wasn't listening. I used to look down on "girly-girls" who talked like that; those girls were silly, stupid and pathetic for not "having a life" outside of some guy. And now I'm one of them. Ain't life something?

I feel like I should be tougher. I'm an adult, a grown woman, an academic, a professional, an educated person, a logical thinker!!! Not that I want to resist feeling it, I just never anticipated how overwhelming and incapacitating missing the one you love could be. Going through the motions of each day feels exhausting. I've found some great things and I'm making good progress with my work but...I just don't care. That shocks me. NOTHING else matters to me. It's lovely and confusing at the same time. Knowing that you can love someone so much-- FEEL so much-- is incredible; however, feeling like I can't function without constant infusions like an IV drip has revealed a whole new, extremely vulnerable, side of me that I wasn't prepared to deal with on this trip. Against my will, my time here is rapidly becoming a psychological adventure as well as an educational one.

Until next time...