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Monday, bloody Monday. Monday is never the best day of the week (although I have a rather compelling argument put together that Tuesdays are worse), but I always tend to feel it more acutely than most people. Every Monday morning I stand at a cold railway station located somewhere in the North West of England and wave goodbye to Mr. Cay for another week. Mr. Cay lives in Liverpool. I live in Manchester. In lamens terms, you could say that we are in a long distance relationship, although (as many people delight in telling me), if I lived in America, the 40 miles between us would practically make him the boy next door.
I've always been a one for long distance relationships. Perhaps it's because that I, myself, am the product of one. The tale of how my Mum and Dad met is your typical boy-gets-house-robbed-by-gypsies-boy-uses-insurance-money-to-fly-to-Florida-boy-meets-girl-whilst-he-is-kicking-living-daylights-out-of-fag-machine-in-a-diner-boy-proposes-to-girl-two-weeks-later-and-then-gets-her-knocked-up love story. Just for the record, yes, I still think that my mother is absolutely mental for choosing to move from the sunny climes of Miami to the not so sunny climes of Manchester, but then again, love makes you do crazy things.
My parents are a living testament to the fact that long distance holiday romances CAN work. Twenty six years later they are still together. They run their own business together, go clothes shopping together, and occasionally chase each around the house attempting to hit each other over the head with items of crokery together. For them at least, it's all worked out ok.
Like most things in life, there are pros and cons to long distance relationships. Whilst there are times when I come home after a hard day slaving over a hot laptop where I would give my right arm to see my beloved, at least us living in different houses in different cities means I never have to live with tripping over his dirty underwear on the way to the bathroom at 2am. Plus, I always know that if worst comes to worst, he is only forty five minutes away by train. That is, of course, if you don't count the bus journey from Liverpool Lime Street to his house in Bootle.
Then, there's the fact that when you don't see each other every day, there's less chance of you getting sick of the sight of each other after the honeymoon period is over. If you start running out of things to say to each other on a Sunday, you've got until Friday evening to top your anecdote reserves up. He can watch Star Trek without me calling him a geek, and I can watch America's Next Top Model without him telling me that I'm feeding the patriarchal dichotomy by watching such crap, before describing in great detail which one he'd snog given half the chance.
This doesn't mean that I don't miss him when he's not around. It doesn't mean that I'm ever going to grow tired of the stupid whispered conversations we have at 1am about which 20th century despot we think we most resemble, or quoting stupid stuff we've seen on the television. It just means that, for the moment, I like my space. And when that changes, I'll be sure to let the world - and my boyfriend - know.
First image courtesy of Four Symbols flickr stream. Second image is the one I have as a tattoo on my right wrist.