I am currently in Bremen, visiting my little sister. It's great to be with her but even though I just arrived, I am already sad that I leave in a couple of days. Ina is my best friend and a wonderful human being and I just wish our lives did not pull us in such different directions. Literally.
I feel like when we were younger the distance didn't matter so much. We just took our time together for what it was, had fun, appreciated the opportunities we had to hang out. The older I get, though, the harder it is to get used to the idea that our times together will be rare and far in between. I know I need to accept it, but I just can't.
For those of you out there who live far from the ones you love... how do you do it? I know that there is no right way to "keep in touch" and we all just sort of do what we can to feel connected... But still, I hope that our collective wisdom and experiences can help us figure out how to get over the sadness that distance creates and replace it with joy.
Do share.
Friday, July 17, 2009
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3 comments:
I don't really know how I do it :) My sister has been living in the States for 6 years now (I'm still in Bulgaria) and we see each other once a year, twice if we're lucky. We skype at least once a week and talk for hours. Even if we have nothing to talk about - just making faces and giggling together. I still miss her too much to think about.
My family is very close- we love reunions and get-togethers, we talk for hours with my grandmas, etc. My aunt and little cousin have been living in the States for the past 5 years. My cousin is 6 now and she takes the whole distance situation very badly- she misses us a lot and spends the whole year asking me "Is it summer already?" knowing that summer is when she gets back to Bulgaria.
She's invented her own way to cope with nostalgia- she tells a different story from her time in Bulgaria to her friends in the US every day. I guess that is her way to keep the memories of home alive. At some point, my aunt tells me, a couple of my cousin's US fellow students started coming up to her asking "How is Dima? When is Dima coming to visit?"- without having met me at all. So my little cousin's found a smart way to bring us into her everyday life at school, with her stories, even if we are thousands miles away.
I am away for a year and haven't visited yet.
Skype blows, especially when you set a meeting, so we use it only to show each other the pets.
Phone works only if calls are not set up or regular in any way so I call my folks randomly, to surprise them, at unusual times of the day. I love to call on a busy Monday morning. Sometimes its once in a few months, sometimes a few nights in a row. That seems to save the "What did you do today, are you warm/ do you eat" questions, and creates situations for more true communication. I am lucky to have family addicted to reading, so we discuss books more than anything else.
With my sister, the good ol' letter is the only thing that works. Blogs help a little to catch up with friends.
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