This is part of a series I call 'daily espressos', where I write down a stream of thoughts on a random topic!
Today marks Hari and my 'one month long-distance anniversary'. When I announced that at family dinner, my mom remarked, 'Kids these days really make up excuses to celebrate anything'. I retorted, 'You have no experience of a proper long-distance relationship, mom'. I then proceeded to tell my dad, who was very much invested in my relationship, about the book that Hari had sent over all the way from the UK and what it was about. Helen was already kind of sick of me talking about it (even though she also never shuts up about her love life).
When I flew back to Hong Kong a month ago, I was apprehensive about how a summer of long-distance would turn out. Relative to the time Hari and I had been properly dating, three months was a long time; and with a seven-hour time difference and full-time work for both of us, it was incredibly difficult trying to work out a time to call. We concluded that seven hours was the worst possible time difference, because when he woke up, I would be at work, and when he got off work, I would be asleep. We finally settled on calling between 12-12:30am for him, and 7-7:30am for me. This meant that both of us would have to sacrifice some sleep, but it was the only reliable time we could really talk. It's gone surprisingly great, and sometimes when we work from home, we call earlier so we both get some more sleep, or when one of us is tired, we just miss a day or two. Some of the small things we've made an effort to do, such as watching Netflix together on the weekends, and sending each other random memes or photos, have really made such a huge difference. We use the time difference to our advantage as well - I sometimes wake up to a whole string of excited texts on something big that's happened in his day, and frankly, that puts a smile on my face for the whole morning.
Some of the bigger things matter, too. The book Hari had sent me was Intact by Clare Chambers, which we had seen precisely once on a trip to Oxford's Blackwells at the end of term. I commented that it looked really interesting and never mentioned it again - and yet here it is in my room, a simple gift that shows how much he cares. Or when Hari suggested we do something last weekend and I said cook together, he looked up tens of recipes for me to choose from. It's things like this that have made long-distance feel so easy and so natural.
I didn't plan for this to be a simping-over-Hari post but it (inevitably) has happened. Whoops <3
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