[Couldn't really find an appropriate section for this, so I thought I would just put it where people go a lot.]
I met my ex-girlfriend (oh how it hurts to put ex here) here, on Susans. She lives on the other side of the ocean. We contacted each other through Skype, and we quickly became friends. She had a boyfriend at the time. Gradually, we became closer and closer friends, and affectuous friends. After a couple of months, we always wanted to be with each other, and talked about how awesome it would be for us to be roommates, and such, and even kidding about marriage. I didn't know at the time, because I didn't have a clear understanding of love, and also expected myself to be more heterosexual, but I'd been absolutely into her for a while then.
Her relationship with her boyfriend hadn't been going well lately, and they broke up. I didn't rejoice, oh no, I really felt sorry for her, but when she told me they were better off that way because of how horrible he was being to her, I tried to cheer up too. But I really wanted her to be happy, so I needed a while not to regret her relationship anymore.
After a few days - a week maybe - I was visiting my mother, and she'd been mean to me. I jumped on the computer and talked to my best friend. She consoled me and made me feel so much better, like always. She understood, as always. She cared, as always. I thought I wanted to be with her forever. Then the thought of her getting a new boyfriend crossed my mind, and I surprised myself thinking I didn't want her to.
Having processed what should've been obvious, I confessed to her. And I was extremely happy she told me she felt the same.
My love for her grew with time. She was just so perfect, so charming, so helpful, so honest, so caring. And said she felt the same (and I have no reason to doubt it). She was everything to me, and I did not want to envision any aspect of my life without her. We made projects. She would visit me next summer, and then we would begin immigration procedures. If everything had gone well, she could immigrate under the "conjugal partner" category of immigrants. We would move in together, go to university together, then maybe found a little business together. A few years after that, we would marry, have a wonderful honeymoon trip, and try our hardest to adopt children. I'd been daydreaming about having children with her before even thinking about anything physical, after all.
I loved her more than I ever thought was possible.Speaking of physical things, just like with everything else, she, and my love for her, gradually opened me up to a point I didn't believe was possible. From being reluctant to the idea of just a wet kiss, with time, I dreamt of her undressing me and kissing me everywhere. Until dysphoria shattered the daydream, but well.
She gave my life a purpose. She also made me a better person over time. She cared to tell me what I was doing wrong, and was willing to support me in my attempts to overcome my difficulties. In that sense, on top of being my lover and best friend, she was a bit like a mother, too.
And then, in the autumn, things started to go wrong-ish. She went full-time and we both started school again, which made us see each other less, considering the 6-hour time difference. When we talked though, nothing seemed wrong. She seemed a little distant, and I did mention it a couple of times, but I didn't insist too much as I have absolute trust in her, and if she tells me it's fine, it's fine.
After a while, though, It'd been a while since I'd heard her express her love, and I felt the need for her to do it. I wasn't really frustrated, just needy, I guess. But at that point, she went offline for a long while. It was hard, but I did my best not to worry about something happening to her, and to hold on without her. It lasted for a long time.
After a week maybe, I couldn't help it. We'd been seeing each other maybe one hour a week, and in a hurry, for a month, and now she'd just disappeared. I sent her an SMS saying how I would've really liked a sign of life, because her absence of response was making me feel bad with time, even though I was trying my best not to let those feelings get to me. I feared I had done something wrong enough for her not to like being with me anymore.
She replied in the beginning of November, after a couple of weeks maybe, just after I mailed her her incredibly late hand-made birthday gift, ironically.
There had been huge digging in her area to renovate phone lines, and that was followed by a catastrophic flood in her country. As a result, no Internet for a long, long while. Oh yeah, for this to make sense, one detail: I could text her, but she couldn't text me back. A silly issue of her carrier not having a contract for sending SMS to Canada and the US.
She said she was very sorry for not having been able to contact me, and explained the circumstances. She had borrowed her father's phone to send me an email through his mobile connection - and she hates him, which tells me, very dire situation. She also, and most of all, told me she had fallen out of love with me, apologised a lot, saying she hadn't missed me or felt the need to be with me at all. She was very sorry to say she could not find an explanation to it.
I was devastated. Even more so considering how cruel it felt that I'd never been able to meet her physically, to hold her hands, to kiss her lips, to stare at her eyes, etc. I wrote her a long SMS in which I said I wasn't angry at her, was actually grateful for her honesty, while not hiding my feelings, and then I spent a long week-end walking around like a useless ghost, after which I cheered up under a not-so-healthy motive.
At the end of the week-end, I thought there had to be a way, and that even if not, if I could be her best friend still, I would be content with that. I wrote her that, also saying I'd like it if we waited until we could talk live to make it official, and also that I figured she wanted space from me, and that I would refrain from texting her from now on. (Up to that point I'd been texting her daily to tell her about silly things in my life and to say I loved her.)
The following weeks were hard, but smoothed by the fact I retained hope. She came back in the end of November, when Internet was finally fixed.
I was really happy to see her. I tried to ask her about the reasons why she'd stopped loving me, but she didn't have an answer. But even though she assured me she did use to love me and didn't exaggerate her feelings, she was sure she didn't love me anymore. She said she still cared about me and considered me one of her best friends, though, so I was very happy. She said she might still come visit me next summer, which on top of the obvious emotional good stuff would be a real life-saver for my transition, as next summer is when I'm going full-time. I don't know what I would have done if she'd wanted to cut bonds completely.
That was two months ago. I've been trying hard to let her go, to ditch my love and focus on friendship. And for a while, I think I was slowly making progress. But lately, for the two last weeks maybe, all those efforts have crumbled to nothingness, it seems. I love her more than anything. I might even love her more than ever before. I keep hoping that she'll come next summer, and that then things will fix themselves, that she'll fall in love with me again. But deep down, I have a feeling it won't go my way, because as a general rule, things don't go my way.
I've gone back to starting at her picture with a smile on my face and daydreaming and kissing air, of saying all the sweetest words in the world, imagining I'm whispering them into her ear, to thinking of our wedding, of all the romantic things we would do together, of us having children together... I feel she's the love of my life, and even though I tried, I just don't want to let her go. Tonight, even, I've sort of taken the resolution of "confronting" her with my feelings, putting my heart out, and asking for a way, any way, to revive our couple. Which I feel would make anyone feel kind of awkward. And this is more or less what prompted me to post.
Don't get me wrong. It doesn't pain me to talk to her. It makes me really happy to talk to her. And I'm still convinced that being just her best friend, while not my favourite solution, would give me more than enough love and happiness, as long as I can be with her, not necessarily all day, every day, forever. I need her, and my love is unconditional. Any amount of love, big or small, that I can get back from what I give, I'll take it. And I think I could do with her finding someone, too, as long as I can be there, and as long as I can do what I can to make her happy. I'm usually a down-to-earth person, but right now, my primary, number one, goal in life, is to be close to her.
But it's not so simple. Immigration, unless you're in couple with a local or a very rich student who can afford the huge university fees for foreigners, is hard if not impossible "just like that". There's always the exchange programs to France which are subject to an agreement with the Québec government, but even though that's pretty close (2-3 hours) to her, thanks to the smallness of European countries, it sounds so hard to achieve. I don't even know where to begin. And I can't hide that I'd crave for more, something I could see her a few days a week at least.
I don't really know what I'm hoping for with this message. Advice, comments, I don't know. But I had to speak of this with someone before I talk to her and it comes out all wrong, and whoever I would talk about this with in private would either make me feel awkward with comments and "just do X" advice (family), feel awkward (nice people who'd feel pressured to help and wouldn't know how) or wouldn't have time to help (psychologist, 50 minutes a week).
