Reunited

Wednesday morning: I arrived in Auckland after a comfortingly uneventful flight.

My bag, however, did not. The clean clothes that I had visions of changing into, a rather crumpled, wrinkled and generally not too healthy smelling caterpillar emerging into a slightly more politely perfumed and less wrinkled butterfly, did not emerge.

So, whilst my boyfriend waited for me upstairs in arrivals, I was filling in forms downstairs, biting back tears. It was bad enough that I wasn’t looking as radiant as I would have liked, and that I’d food welded onto various parts of my clothing when he saw me for the first time after 3 and a half months, but he was actually going to have to put up with that for the whole day.

His first encounter of me wasn’t exactly as I’d planned. I’d done my best with my variety of wipes and a compact mirror to make myself reasonably presentable and, while I wasn’t going to win any awards, it could certainly have been worse. But instead I was a little emotional, and not in the way that I should have been.

Emerging from arrivals, I saw him instantly. A whole rush of thoughts and emotions, but all I could do was say hello. On the ride back to his accommodation, as New Zealand was emerging from a chilly night into an overcast morning, I began to realise that I was here, and, over everything, I was with my boyfriend.

It is now Sunday morning here and that feeling continually floods me, over and over. We can be doing the most ordinary of things and it hits me. Food shopping, and he’s there, beside me. Cooking (questionable New Zealand allegedly ‘English Recipe’) beans on toast. Watching TV. And waking up (it’s a bit difficult to avoid someone in a single bed).

I have been trying to establish my place in my boyfriend’s new life. I can only imagine it is something similar to watching your partner go to University. You let them go, you listen to them change, their stories, their experiences, their friends. And you arrive, for a visit. There are changes, you are a guest in their new life. They have friends, they have established relationships with people you met two minutes ago. There are jokes, there is a world that you cannot relate to and don’t understand where you fit into. You are reliant on them to help you feel your way, a new city, a new environment, new accommodation. This person does this, this person knows this. Names are passed to me and I promptly lose them in the poor filing system my brain adopts (much like my physical approach), beneath a pile of mental post it notes on currency translations, pronunciation of place names and crazy New Zealand driving rules and regulations (as far as I can gather: none or at least those that exist are somewhat inconsistent).

It is like being on your partner’s work night out. Except constantly.

But to be with him again –

On Thursday morning I woke early and, in true half-asleep-really-shouldn’t-be-attempting-complex-thought style, I flooded myself with thoughts. On the flight over, I began to panic. The overwhelming thought of being with him again torn apart by the intolerable thought of losing him again. Was it too painful to see him? How was I going to return home, leaving him here? I did it once, I said goodbye once, one of the hardest moments of my life. And I will have to do it over and over in the next few years. I will have to learn to reduce the transition, deny myself the down-time that I indulged in after he went, people won’t be able to pick me up, hold me, carry me again and again. I will learn. I’m sure.

There will be a time when he will be there one minute and gone the next and I will be able to cope with it. I’ll say goodbye at the airport, or from a car window, and then I will be on my own again and will return home without him.

I wonder if it will ever get easier. I wonder if it does, if that is wrong.

Thursday morning, with him beside me, those thoughts exploded into a million other tiny fragments of worry and aching. He was next to me asleep, yet I was terrified. I was terrified of everything that I have experienced since Thursday night: finding my way, or my place, whichever, in his new life, and all the things that are still to come.

The days have passed, I have operated in something close to a routine and managed to develop some independence, my most recent example of this was facing my fear of driving in NZ so, due to a public transport system that leaves a lot to be desired, I have hired a car. Out of my comfort zone and into the front seat of a Nissan Pulsar (possibly the biggest and most powerful car that I have ever driven) and onto the roads of New Zealand, trying desperately to pre-empt the inconsistent and frankly terrifying actions of the local drivers.

I have done relatively little sight seeing so far, I have seen what there is of the local town (not a lot) and have driven to the coast through some beautiful countryside and roads that rival the travel sickness inducing tracks that weave through the Lake District that would leave even the most hardened of stomachs a little unsettled.

But I have seen him. He could have been situated in Hell and I’d have still happily paid a month’s salary to go to the ends of the earth to find him. The fact that it is New Zealand is an added bonus and will keep me occupied, now some blissfully ignorant Kiwi has entrusted me with the keys of a car on foreign soil. I have been overloaded with information on where to go, what to do. What I have taken in is probably bugger all. I have a million leaflets all instructing me to visit various regions and partake in all manner of activities in order to make my trip to New Zealand the holiday of a lifetime.

But that has already been achieved. Sights I will see on my own, I will digest, I will enjoy. I will drive to them alone, I will think and I will sing very loudly (and probably a little painfully on the high notes). I will have space and I will have time. But all of that doesn’t compare to a few small hours a day with my boyfriend, even if it’s just to fall asleep together.