TL;DR long distance boyfriend that I’ve only met 4 times and was head over heels for has all but disappeared
Short story long, in June of 2020 a good friend and colleague of mine who I sincerely trust to have my best interest at heart (we are both nurses and have worked in the trenches together) introduced me to a family friend of hers, knowing we were both single and thinking we might hit it off. While wildly different on paper, she was onto something. I am a 33 year old Asian American cis female, work as a nurse manager, childless and living in Seattle, identify as liberal, non-religious/agnostic marijuana endorsing bleeding heart whose leisure activities include pot smoking, riding my bike, taking naps, and deeply pondering my fluctuating emotions. He is a 42 African male that doesn’t understand the definition of “cis”, works as a long-haul truck driver, has 3 daughters in Africa (one of which just gave birth at the age of 19), living in his truck mostly but based in Indianapolis, identifies as a Jesus loving Christian/believer, sober as the day is long, whose leisure activities include working, working overtime, and deeply pondering the direction of Tesla/Bitcoin stock.
We started off texting, which progressed to video chatting. The beginning is always the best, right? He thought I was the prettiest and smartest girl, that he had won the lottery by being introduced to me. While I walked into the whole thing a bit skeptical (previous to this, I had resigned to my singleness during the PANDEMIC 😂 as a healthcare worker up to my neck in the plague), over the weeks I had become quite attached to his energy, his jokes, his path in life, and his honesty. He would introduce me on video to all his friends, so proud that I was in his life with nothing to hide. This guy was really beginning to grow on me, and the best part, we both wanted the same things in life. To settle down, and to have a home filled with a family that you love. We were constantly communicating; anytime I called, he answered. Anytime he called, I answered too. We talked about everything, and even though we had such fundamental differences in our world views we spent hours explaining to each other why we saw the world the way we did. Magically, such differences brought us closer together. Even in the middle of our sleep we slept with the phone on next to our ears, to ensure that if the other person called we would hear and answer.
Over the weeks we finally decided to meet. 😰 Like everything was on the line, talking and texting and video chatting for weeks with someone I had become so attached to. But would this eromance translate into reality? We were, and still remain, so very different. While filled with anxious dread, I was also beginning to have HOPE! Maybe I would not die a cat lady wench. OR maybe this whole experiment would crash and burn. Only one way to find out. You know what they say- relationships are like sharks. If they don’t move forward, they die.
So, I book my ticket. This takes a lot more effort and strategic planning than in non-pandemic times because I decide I have to quarantine before I leave because there’s covid flying everywhere at my facility and I don’t want to get anyone sick. SO, the day finally shows up and I get on that damn plane and I get off the damn plane and he’s LATE an hour+ to pick me up at the airport and I’m waiting and waiting and starving to death and he finally calls to say that he’s almost there... so I go outside to wait... and...
...
...
.....
It’s cold out here...
...
....
What car is he in again?
...
Oh shit.
...
.....
Is that HIM?
There he is. With roses. And really short. Like we’re the same height (I’m 5’5) but I wore heels so I was taller. And there he is!
And long story short, we hit it off. It was.. words cannot describe. We were the same in person as we were in the phone calls. While the weekend was short, we knew all we needed to know. It was so comfortable to just be around each other. Our energy, our chemistry, our mutual commitment just clicked. Our future was set, everything else was just a matter of time. I remember thinking to myself as I fell asleep that night after we made love, listening to his soft snores, thinking that maaaybe, just maybe? We were falling in love. It was going to.. actually work out?
scratchy rewinding vhs tape sound of fantasy being dispelled
Fast forward few months later. To be fair, we exchanged visits a few more times, 4 times to be exact. And to be fair, he came to seattle once, met my father even in a very traditional “I’m your future son in law” kind of dinner. I went to Indianapolis a few times, and to be fair, when we were together everything was.. easy. I liked cooking for him, and he works a lot driving long-haul so we pretty much just laid out In bed for 2-3 days having sex and eating food, and taking naps. My favorite pastimes. Not very high maintenance but that’s life sometimes. To be fair, he always paid for dinners and things we did out (#notabum), offered to buy my plane tickets, but I never took him up on the offer (#independentwoman).
Sigh. Now the fall from grace. The last I saw him was October 2020. He promised to come for thanksgiving but we got into a quibble right before (our first fight, we.. survived... but nothings been quite the same since). It wasn’t a big fight about anything in particular. We communicate differently and deal with emotions differently- neither party was right or wrong. While we were both licking our wounds from the argument, he made the decision to pick up a last minute contract job driving for the post office during holiday season. Consequently, the thanksgiving trip to seattle was now cancelled due to picking up that short term job that would be over around Christmas. 😡
I fumed silently, but what could I do? He made a promise that he broke (first red flag?), but at the risk of turning into a self-centered bitch that only cares about her own gratification, I tried to reason with my pettier self. He has 3 daughters back in his home country, two younger and one older in which he was a teenage father. He supports his younger daughters in private school (total $2000usd a month), and also pays a stipend to his older daughter that was pregnant (unknown but I assume a few hundred), and also has expenses in the US (apartment, car payment), and owns his rig which also has even higher expenses. Maybe that extra contract job is more needed than he reveals. This is the best part about loving someone- you see the best in them, and maybe they even aspire to live up to that image.
When my mom calls sometime around thanksgiving, I tell her what happened. She sighs and wisely remarks (pardon the poor mandarin to English translation), “Decide if this is something you can overlook in him or if it’s something you cannot stop seeing. If you see misery, that misery is yours. If you can see happiness, that happiness is yours, too.”
Christmas rolls around.
As a lovelorn chess player calculating their next move in the game, I am harshly reminded that this is a long distance relationship with many barriers in horizon. But it’s now an established fact; I am in love with this person. Whether it’s the real person or my perception of this person, I have that feeling of being attached, of having someone in your thoughts as you go through the day, of being connected to another human being. It’s the warmest and safest place for any human being to be, and yet any pain inflicted in that safe space resonates and cuts so deeply.
We are still talking in the next few months, but less intimately and less frequently. The video calls have ceased. Sometimes we have a good conversation, and other times it’s just the 3 minute “hey I’m on my way into work” call for a few days, or sometimes we won’t talk for a few days. I notice that he calls me a lot less and, for lack of a better solution, I pretend to ignore him for a few days and stop calling him but then end up cracking and call him anyway only to whine and complain to him about how we’re not as close anymore.
To add to the fray, remember his eldest daughter that i mentioned? She has a baby boy in December. It also helps to mention that he is on rocky terms with his eldest daughter; she is a bit of a “wild child” in his opinion, declined in her studies which he financially supported and she squandered away, then got knocked up without a baby daddy. This is a huge event in his life that he’s having a hard time processing (grandpa at 42) and he confides in me, which I try my best to listen and be supportive. He tells me he knows he needs to go back to Africa soon, and sort things out at home, something that I fully endorse and encourage. In the back of my mind, I know this means that he will be gone for a month at least.
I start getting agitated around the end of January. I want to see him so badly but I’m almost afraid to insist that he come to seattle, for fear that would just be a setup. He would promise to visit, only to break another promise. Unfortunately, I am more agitated than afraid. So i pull out all the tricks I have up my sleeve which includes sending screenshots of flight prices from Indy to seattle, to not so subtly insist he should come and visit before he goes back home. He caves and promises to come before he goes to Africa, however now thinking back on the conversation I think I said something like, “do you promise to come? Promise promise?” And he paused before reluctantly responding, “...Yea...!”
End of January- I get vaccinated x2 and the second dose kicks my ass. I am mildly delirious with fever and chills for 12 hours. He completes the usual wellness checks expected of a partner during convalescence. The next morning he calls, “so I’m glad you’re feeling better! I didn’t want to bother you while you weren’t feeling well to ask you about it, but I bought a one way ticket back home and I’m leaving on Monday!”
For shame. I keep it together but later recalibrate and feel salty af. I try to save face, I try to empathize. In reviewing the post, dear reader, have I not depicted this man in an honest light? I help arrange for him to get covid tested in Indy, buy him hella expensive N95 masks and goggles for eye protection on Amazon making sure to overnight ship so he gets supplies on time before his flight. I track his flight on the inter webs when he arrives in Addis Ababa for his transfer knowing that he will have WiFi and we can use messenger to talk. We chat quickly and off he goes to the next leg of his flight.
Thank you for hanging in there, my dear reader. This is where it gets to the present. I don’t hear from him for about a week or so and feel fairly rejected. I can see that he’s been online on messenger, but haven’t received any messages from him. I wrote him a whole thing trying to communicate to him some of the agitation that I felt in the way he left- to which he responded later in the day. We chatted for a bit, I felt better. He explained that he doesn’t have internet in the more rural areas, but I can see that he’s been online on messenger. He explains that he drove an hour or so to the city near him to get WiFi so we could chat in the present. This doesn’t entirely make sense to me but I go with it. He then asks me for $300, which is interesting because he has never asked me for money. He explains that his money in his US account is tied up in stock and that he can’t access it and he needs to complete his rent payment. I can afford the $300 so I zelle him the money... we end the chat on a good note more or less.
Now, silence. It’s been 3 weeks since then, and he hasn’t been online on messenger. I got curious so i messaged his brother (we chatted in the past on WhatsApp) to inquire if he was okay, and his brother confirmed that he was okay and asked when I would come to visit them. His brother responded immediately, it didn’t seem as if he needed to drive an hour to the city to get wifi. So it seems that they get internet after all? Or perhaps his brother and him are not together, although when we chatted on messenger a few weeks he told me he was with his brother.
He has an ex wife back home, however I’m not so worried about the ex wife over other women that could cross his path. He doesn’t strike me as the cheating type, to be frank I am the probably the hotter one of the two of us and he takes an arrogant pride in upholding morals from his religious upbringing. I don’t exactly know what to expect anymore from all this. Like I’ve mentioned we’ve only been together in 4 separate instances, but it was enough to know there was something of a concrete connection. I have a tendency to over analyze and melodramaticize things, I’m aware. I know that I am occasionally needy partner in the communication department, but overall I try to put myself in the other persons shoes to give them a fair perspective. I don’t know what I’m waiting for exactly. For him to come back? And then what? That closeness is gone, dissipated. I’m not even angry anymore, the rejection still hurts a bit, but overall he feels like a faint memory. Hate is not the opposite of love, the opposite of love is indifference. I wake up every morning to check my phone and see if he’s been online. Nada. It’s become an obsession with no end in sight. Then I really start to worry- is he ok? Did he get covid? Is he really ok? ...Does he still love me?
So, reddit, what’s a girl to do? Wait it out? Move on? If I went to Asia and couldn’t get WiFi somewhere remote for extended periods of time I would get a phone card if I wanted to call. Which leads me to the natural conclusion that he doesn’t really feel the need to talk to me. I will stop whining now. Please sooth and entertain me with your thoughts below if you have endured this pointless ramble of a lament.
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