In Continuum.

I refer to myself as a "victim" when it comes to long distance relationships, and I use the word "victim" because the definition of it seems to fit with my current situation. The definition of the word "victim" refers to any person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other events or action. In this case, the so-called "event" seems to be my time spent away from my loved ones back home, and the part of me that has been harmed or injured as a result is probably my heart. Long distance relationship is a tricky thing, and it's kinda like trying to untangle and oiled ball of wires. I've never expected myself to be involved in a long distance relationship, and a part of my criteria for a girlfriend before I officially found Neptina was that she'd have to stay close to me. It is strange, and it may not make sense to everybody out there, and some people may attribute it to the fact that I haven't got a car or a license to boot. Yet, if you think about it, even if you do have a car to drive your girlfriend home everyday, having her live on the other side of the country (literally) is still going to be quite a hassle. Love conquers a lot of things, but it can only do so much when the money it takes to pump those petrol starts to burn a hole in your pocket. That is when it slaps you in the face, and you wish that your girlfriend lives underneath your unit in the same condominium.

I still think Pasir Ris is very far away from where I stay in Singapore, but I have become quite accustomed to traveling the distance, thanks to the straight bus between our homes. Distance no longer is an obstacle, and I have now thought myself to be somewhat silly to consider that to be a criteria at all. After all, no matter how far you go, you are still within the same country, and the road in front of your house eventually leads to her house, if you are determined enough to travel it by foot. The distance can be conquered, and I suppose I have conquered it both physically and mentally many times over. However, nothing that we've ever done in the past could have prepared us for this long distance relationship, something which is most commonly heard in relationship horror stories. Chances of survival are small, and the odds are usually against you when it comes to long distance relationship. We've heard it many times before, those stories about couples breaking up after being away from each other for too long. Sometimes, it doesn't even have to be a long haul, like a year or two away from each other. Some couples do not operate very well with distance I suppose, and it isn't something that can be blamed for the most part. Long distance relationship, before this, was like a fable of sorts that I've never considered.

As mentioned before, the decision to come to Buffalo was made a long time ago, way before even Neptina came along into my life as a mere friend. The plot thickened when I became romantically involved with her, and the situation then became a little complicated. As much as I wanted to remain behind and keep as far away as possible from being a victim of a long distance relationship, I knew in the back of my mind that I had to do it. You know, to move away from my comfort zone, to toss myself into a foreign territory without a map or a compass. In truth, I came over to Buffalo without much planning and not a lot of luggage to speak of. I probably had the lightest luggage as compared to my three other friends who came over with me. In my mind, I wanted to start from square one with just a pocket full of cash and a lot of guts to boast. Perhaps I wanted to learn that way, to cut off all conveniences and luxuries, and to start from the very beginning of things. That might explain why I also bought the most daily necessities the moment we touched down in Buffalo, and how I also spent the most money on things like lamps, bedsheets, electric kettle, and all that kinda things. I came over here pretty much with my bare hands, and I suppose that was what I was aiming at - the fastest way to grow out of my shell.

I wanted to do all those, and I think I have achieved all those. I have had a lot of time to mentally prepare myself I suppose, all the way from the very beginning of my college life up until the moment when I left. Yet, I didn't factor in the possibility of being with somebody in the midst of my college life at all. I expected to leave my friends and family behind for months, but a girlfriend never came to me while I was trying to mentally prepare myself. After all, the way that Neptina and I was completely due to chance and some strange mathematical miracle in some ways, and we still constantly talk about how things could have been different if 1) I was late 2) She was late 3) I was a pervert. At any rate, her presence in my life, though welcomed, was something I failed to see when I was trying to prepare myself. I was not prepared to play the role of a victim in a long distance relationship, not ready to deal with the fact that we will be in different time zones and on completely different continents altogether. It was a daunting thought at the beginning, and I remembered all the horror stories that my friends have ever told me. Even the stronger couples that I have known in the past did not stand the test of both distance and time. Many have faltered, though some have survived. The trouble is, though, that you don't have a manual for such things, and you can't help but feel like you are going out into uncharted territories with your eyes blindfolded. After a step or two, it becomes terrifying.

I admit that for the most part of the trip to Buffalo from Singapore, my mind was both too tired and too excited to think about the growing distance between myself and Neptina. The plane ride went by in a daze of sorts, and it was punctuated mostly by food from the stewardesses and the various sleeping positions that I adopted throughout the trip. Even the first day or two in Buffalo failed to leave a mark on me, and I thought I was able to handle it. Perhaps it was the fatigue, or the surrealistic feel of everything around me. Even two days into my trip here, I still found it difficult to believe that I have made it this far on my own, by myself. At any rate, it was not until a week into my stay here in a foreign land did the nail hit deep enough into my chest. The pain of distance is the kind of excruciating pain that you cannot extinguish simply by thinking of happy thoughts. The voice of your loved ones over the phone doesn't help very much either because it only serves to remind you just how far away you are from everything that you have grown to love and care for. At least that was how I felt, away from everybody and everything back home, completely alone and scared out of my wits. It took a while to sink in, but there were nights when it would sink in too deep, and I'd tear uncontrollably about being away for so long.

But, like cockroaches, we have adapted to this distance, and I am glad to say that we are doing OK, something that we constantly remind ourselves of. I cannot help but wonder how the generation of our parents remained in communication in the past. That was a generation when "love letter" perhaps meant more than what it means to us, somehow. I am thankful for the internet, and have remained in contact through phone calls over Skype as well as video conferences. We've kept a blog on Tumblr to update each other on what has been going on in each others' lives, as well as our own common blog to record random little nothings from the back of our very vibrant minds. Aside from all of those, we've been writing letters despite the fact that it seems to take forever to reach each other. My latest letter, a physical one mind you, was actually sent mistakenly to Osaka because of a postage screw-up on their part and not mine. On nights when we are both free to do so, we'd even turn on our Skype throughout the night so that the other person could watch and look over. It may seem like too much work just to keep in contact, and may seem redundant to some people. But it is something that comforts me immensely, even if I am the one doing the looking.

It is comforting to know that when you wake up in the middle of the night, the person that you love is going to be right next to your on your bed, in some shape or form. It's not that I wake up in my bed screaming because of a nightmare or anything like that, because I haven't had that kind of thing for a long time now. But it is still comforting sometimes to hear Neptina doing something on her side of the world, whether or not it is the sound of her typing something on her laptop, or the sound of the television from the living room. I'd recognize some of the advertisements and television shows sometimes even when I am sleeping soundly, and these are just some of the things that reminds me that things are still going on back home, and very much alive while I am gone. I suppose we all need this kind of reminder every once in a while, something to tell you that things back home are exactly the same as how you left them, that everything is going to be all right. At any rate, I'd leave my computer turned on for hours on end, and she'd be the same floating head in the morning when I wake up as the floating head that waved goodnight to me the night before. Even when the bed is empty on her side of the world, she'd literally bounce into view and greet me cheerfully.

On weekends like today, when I haven't got a reason to be in school at all, she'd be the one sleeping while I mind my own business throughout the day, watching over her. Perhaps it is the fact that she prefers to turn all the lights in her bedroom off, which invites a great many vivid imaginations to brew in one's head. Neptina wakes up more often than I do in the middle of the night, and there were times in the past when she'd call me on the phone just because she had a nightmare of sorts. I've never actually watched over somebody like this before, because I'd usually succumb to my own fatigue halfway through the first ten minutes or so. This time, however, I can watch over her without the fear of falling asleep myself, and it has been a comforting thing to do. To see the person that you love in pixelated form, shuffling in between the sheets, her hair sprawled on the pillow like river systems that we've studied in geography so long ago. On nights when the lights from the laptop monitor is enough to reach her body, you'd be able to see her chest moving up and down to every breath that she takes, and then there are those moments when you'd see the tiny glitter in her half-opened eyes, with the eyeballs rolling around inside, hinting a dream in the back of her mind.

Sometimes, with a groan and a stretch, she'd wake up in the middle of the night for a variety of reasons. A nightmare sometimes, but mostly when nature calls, Neptina would always turn to me and I'd be there, checking up on her. She told me once that she never used to sleep with her back facing the outside of the bed, and always the side with the wall. With the laptop turned on and my floating head constantly hovering around, she has been able to sleep while she faces the other side, and she feels more secure because of that. It is silly, maybe, but it makes me feel as if I am doing my job protecting her somehow, even if there really isn't much to protect her from other than the wild imaginations of the night. I get more pleasure out of watching her, really, the way that her breathing would sometimes takeover the music from my Macbook, rising and falling like a natural symphony orchestra, and those rare moments when she'd murmur something in her sleep. We have been doing this for a great many nights now, and we have also taken pictures of each other sleeping. I hate the look on my face when I sleep, and I think I look like a corpse while sleeping, truth be told. She says the same thing about herself, but I truly believe that there isn't a more peaceful sight than the one of your lover asleep next to you.

I suppose when it comes to a long distance relationship, no one can safely say that they are very good at it. A friend of mine could have been called an expert at long distance relationships, but even his relationship disintegrated after four years of trying, with one of them in Singapore and the other in Australia. It's like the idea of having a "love doctor", an oxymoron by itself, because I don't think any of us are authorities on this issue at all. We are all trying to feel our way through long distance relationships, and we are also hoping that it will not get to the better part of what we hold to be precious and true. It is a tricky thing, as I started this blog entry with, and it certainly makes victims out of a lot of people, a lot of the time. What we can do is to work out an equation that fits both parties, knowing that it'd work within those boundaries. The truth is that there's no one else I'd rather be in a long distance relationship than Neptina, because no one else is worth the trouble and worth the time. I suppose she, as well as the thing that we share, are just too important for geography to take over, you know. Even if the both of us exist to each other mainly in the form of pixels, even if the clarity of our images are dictated solely by external forces like the internet connection, we still try, and we still try our very best. In more ways than one, that seems to be the only way for us to reach into the screen, to break the fourth wall literally, and it seems to have worked out so far. In pixels or not, I still love my girlfriend in high or low resolution.