Day One - Exposition

I opened the Excel file this morning and figured out I hadn't updated it since September 24, 2009. I couldn't help smiling. Before that, I had updated that insidious and pointless file every single day for two years. Sure, it added very little value to our organization. It was busy work. But I enjoyed keeping busy. I had nothing else to occupy my thoughts then. Well, not nothing. I lived an adventure everyday. That's what happens when you reside in one of the most violent cities in the world. I kept alive and worked. There was little else, and that constantly updated file, where I meticulously reported every single paper clip that left the supply office (even though no one had asked me to), was proof of that.

I did, however had a different sort of life after office hours. There was the gym (and I should really look into renewing my membership one of these days), the being sick (diabetes was my hobby) and of course, my online life. Occasionally I would be set up on dates by some of my few remaining offline friends. One of those stubborn people whom I hadn't managed to scare away. And these dates where fairly innocuous. Nothing much happened there, but then again, nothing much was expected. Back then, what I couldn't wait to do, was finish my chicken, say goodnight, drive home turn on my TV and log on to my real life. My online life. Where admittedly not much happened, either.

There is a long story. Which someday I may bore people with. Anybody who could possibly read this either knows the story or has lived it. Suffice it to say that one day, after an impossibly hilarious blind date, I logged on and realize one of my worst fears had come to be. No, 30 Rock had not been cancelled. But it was close. Through no fault of my own, I had fallen in love with one of my online compatriots. It was scarier still, to figure out, that he had fallen in love with me too.

What followed was indeed rom-com material. The Mexican girl and the Mid-western guy, trying to figure out if a relationship was even possible. We still have more in common than most people could learn about any of us in a lifetime. But that did not in any way made the choice easier, or the flimsy flirting any less embarrassing. I had always been adamantly opposed to long distance relationships and online relationships. An online, long-distanced one seemed like the irony coming home to roost. I think to a certain extent we both tried to shrug it off. To a greater extend, it is very probable that at some point we both realized that we were doomed. And that, kids, is the short story of how I met my boyfriend.

And were that the end, then this blog would be pointless. It would have been exciting to document the story as it was unfolding. Man, it was a doozy. But I didn't think of it at the time. See, when you fall in love, really fall in love, for the first time at 29 and suddenly find yourself in a very serious relationship with a man whose face you know better than your own before you've seen it outside of a LCD screen, you have time for little else. Yes, my relationship with Ryan, the shy tech-consultant, while decidedly a source for many happy moments has remained to this day a strictly online one. Again, through no fault of my own.

Once the awkward phase (which lasted all of maybe two weeks) was over, I couldn't wait to hop a plane to the American Mid-West. I am impulsive like that. And for four months and change, Karma has stood in the way. Not that he hasn't tried to fly all the way to my side of the world. Like I said, Karma has been a bitch lately. Four months may not seem like much to the plethora of people who have been in online relationships for a lot longer than that. But to me, who is clumsily discovering the wonders of being in love with the right man at the right time, it has seems like the entire run of Bonanza. Wikipedia it. That was a long time.

It's now exactly 45 days until, if the karmic debt has been finally paid off, Ryan arrives here. Well, not here, but very, very close. It is good news. It is butterflies-in-your-tummy amazing. It seems like forever. It seems like not enough time.

And this time, I don't want to miss the chance to document what happens between this day and the last entry, which will be shortly after I pick my love up from the airport. I want to have something to look back on. Something tangible. Some way of unloading some of the crazy expectation and maddening anxiety. And this, as some documentary put it last year, is it.