Episode 17: When I get a man....

I didn't really want to do this but I felt like I had to.

Me and SAM's relationship has reached the breaking point in an extremely unfortunate turn of events and for the past two weeks my mind has just been whirling and emotional and crazy.

I don't know definitively what's going to happen, but I know how badly I'm going to miss this love. I would go into all the things that I'm going to miss but this blog essentially tells that story. Every post highlights all the things he has taught me and the happiness that he has brought me in the last couple of months. It also shows the hurt and hardship that we go through and ... sometimes the bad outweighs the good. If there were an opportunity to have him next to me I would take it. If I could just hug him and feel comforted one more time before giving it all up to be alone again.... I would take it. But that's not an option for us and...there is nothing that can be done about it right now.

I wish I could really explain what it feels like to be at this state of confusion and not know whether you're coming or going. It's heartbreaking. It feels like I just.... am helpless. Even now as this struggle continues, I can't even find an opportunity to get him on the phone, at least hear his voice and talk about things. Hope I don't make anyone sad with this one but.... I just didn't know how else to get it out. There's nothing left to say except that my heart is broken and I don't know what to do about it.

So I wanted to put white candle by Tamar Braxton but I couldn't find it so K. Michelle for kicks and giggles. Lighten the mood in here ;)

Episode 16: Where do we go from here?

I often battle with myself about doing what I'm doing here, with SAM and... I guess it's because I'm still making it up along the way. But I don't think he knows or realizes how much I get out of just speaking to him. We text a lot but we all know text is like ehh, more impersonal. Ugh, but when I get on the phone it's like ... that's him, that's the guy that you write a whole blog about, and go crazy about at the end of every week when he doesn't text you back and he's out at a party lol, and that's why.

He fills every awkward silence that my nervousness won't let me enter, and leaves me in laughter. I mean I know I laugh a lot in general but, I've definitely met a lot more people who fill those spaces with tears... and not the good kind. And every memory, story, moment we share is like a reminder of the best thing you've ever had. I think the difference between how I feel about SAM and how I've felt about other people is that, I could hang off the edge of a cliff (I wouldn't because I'm smart enough to know not to even approach the edge of a cliff) but I could be hanging there, and not fear a thing if he's there with me. He could be hanging, or he could be safe, whatever happens I know he won't let me feel anxious or alone. And I really can't describe how many years I've felt both anxious and alone... which sucks. So it's different, yeah, being miles and miles away but ... I guess if I was going to do this with anyone, it'd have to be someone who was worth it. And even though he makes me really upset sometimes, and he's really weird, and he thinks we'll have ugly kids.... he's still worth it. I hope it really works out someday, because you can go back and forth telling someone you love them all the time and they can know it's true but... it makes a big difference when they can feel it in the warmth of your hug, or the light of your smile, dimples in your cheeks. I think I could definitely struggle through life with SAM, as long as he wants to, too.

Bless the Telephone.

SAM has seen my blog and read some posts & the topic has come up as to whether he should contribute? If any of you lovely readers think it would benefit the blog to hear what SAM has to say about this mess, please cast your vote in a comment! I'll probably allow him to do so if just one other person thinks its a good idea. But if no one does then :P it's just me!

Episode 15: Confession of a Pills n' Potions addict

I listen to that song on repeat, like every day and I couldn't even tell you what what any of the lyrics are other than "pills & potions, we're overdosing, I'm angry but I still love you.... I still love (x1000)"

Nicki, you read my mind. 

Imagine this:
You're on a roller coaster that only goes up. Each moment you're climbing a new height, adrenaline on high, checkpoint by checkpoint it's the ride you never want to leave. And finally, you're at the top, crescendo. There's no where else to go but you're suspended there, looking down. All you see is what's beneath you, everything you've been avoiding on this ride up. You have a choice to make, and it seems clear, but you can't pass go. Why is that?

I'd like to know why I didn't do it, and if I ever really wanted to. I wasn't sure and suddenly..... I'm smirking now at the thought, that suddenly there was more track. Relationships are a mysterious thing to me, just as life is, and so when someone important loses their life... it affects everything. One day, I was ready to yell at SAM and tell him how I was done with this and literally the next day, I was begging to hear from him. I was scared, I was nervous, I was guilty, I was angry, I was everything all at once but none of that .... none of that could have compared to what I was sure he was feeling. And anything I thought before went out the window. This time, it wasn't about me, it was about the person that I love, his life and his heart that was unraveling right before his eyes.

I couldn't be there to support him. I couldn't hold his hand or sit outside with him while he tried to make sense of it all. I wanted so, so badly, to be the person he turned to and all I could do was send a text, and hope he allowed me to make a call. When he did I... stumbled over my words and tried to make sense of a situation that I obviously couldn't understand and... he laughed at me. If all I could get was the sound of his smile on the other end of my cellphone... it was enough.

Sigh, I say all that to say, that I love that guy. That 8,000 mile away guy. That please dear lord jesus let me find a way to see him again guy. That "calls me crazy every day" guy. 'Cause man, even when I was feeling SO ready to quit, life happened and I found myself right back on the ride that only goes up.

So what's the confession here? sigh, lol the confession is I probably right this blog to just get it OUT of me how much I love, love, love this guy and how really, really, REALLY silly it seems from a continent away. Sigh, but I can't help it.

So shoutout to SAM's new angel, I know that he lost someone so special but I feel like he gained an angel of blessings, somehow I feel I've gained something too. As tough as I know moving forward will be, all I can do is provide the unconditional love and support that I feel for him. I really do wonder what God & the universe has in store because at this rate.... this relationship has already gone farther than I anticipated (I hope it's nothing but beautiful, wonderful things). And shoutout to Steve, who donated last week and sent a message that in more ways than one left me speechless. I thank you for sending those positive vibes in my direction and I can't help but feel your words influenced my willingness to focus on something bigger than myself. You are quite possibly wiser than your years in this field of love ;)

Also, I'd love to hear from you guys in comments, shares, messages, texts, whatever! Do you honestly think that tragedies have more of a tendency of bringing couples closer or tearing them apart? I'd really love to know what anyone else has gone through in an unexpected situation. So, let me know what you think!

Episode 14: IF I wrote you a letter it would say:

I fall in love with people ever so intricately.
Not in the midst of it all, and not all at once.
It's only in their absence, when I can recall the way his eyes scrunch up in the sunlight or dodge to the left when he's uncomfortable.
The way he stutters when he says "Well, I always want to see you" on the phone. Do I really begin to pen all the ways I love him.

Such detail, such tiny, minute indications of emotion that only become evident when the story is played back to me behind shut eyelids. I've asked myself over and over again what it means to be "in it" with someone. What does it mean to never share a bed, or a drink, or a shiver down your spine with someone that you're "in it" with.

And it all boils down to the cinema of. The darkness where his voice comes into play and tells me about his day, his week, his month, his year. The pictures, the videos, the voice recordings that remind me of the real person that's behind this screen of imagination. WE are intricate pawns in a minds game of memory. A rocky van ride, where you calculate change faster than I could solve a simple math problem, and I'm in awe of the fact that you don't have tissue in your bathroom... or maybe in terror actually.

But regardless I always get a bit weepy eyed when the story of the indian taxi driver comes to play. When he says "I can tell he doesn't want you to leave", and begins to map out the story of our lives together. The children we never talked about, the marriage we never planned. He speaks so confidently as if he knows a secret that has yet to be revealed to us and gogo would have told me God whispered it in his ear for me.

It's just a little story of perfection, and how crazy it seemed then, but how wonderful it sounds now when you kind've replay it, squint your eye at it, and cock your head to the side. Yeah,I  can see it. Maybe it's possible to never leave. Maybe it's possible to have the wedding, and the babies, and the life spanned across two continents, maybe it's all a dream waiting to come true.

But you wipe those weepy eyes when you realize the intricacies have already been written. You may never know how that conversation ends. The stories, the films, the eye wide shut cinema that you fall in love with every day that it plays for you, is all subject to the advancement of time. The more time, the farther apart, the further we drift away from those feelings of knowing.

As I'm presently subject to doubt, I need you more than I needed you before. Just tell me, that you will write this life with me, you have to write this life with me... because without the magic you bring, I'm just a girl, falling in love with a paper and pen. Slowly and positively becoming unwritten.

Episode 13: Trouble in Paradise

Without SAM, these past few weeks have been intolerable.

Even though, I reached 300 votes on 1stclassfashion.com, they won't be giving me the prize. I literally felt so crushed and distraught at the idea of another opportunity being snatched away from me, that the impossibility of this relationship began to weigh so heavily on my mind and my heart. I'm usually the optimist, but with all these life transitions I've been making it's been so hard to find SAM in the chaos. Even after trying to reach out to him, it just feels like there really is too much distance between us.

Additionally, for the first time really... I'm jealous. I feel like it's not a typical jealousy... or maybe it is  (I'm not really used to feeling jealous). But on top of just being sad about not having the chance I wanted to see SAM again, I'm so jealous of everyone who does get to see him. People that get to hang out with him every day and talk to him. I feel like I probably care more than any ONE of them and I work so hard and yet I'm the one who gets denied the simplest joys. I don't even get to tell him these things ... my entire blog audience will know this information before he does, and how could that not be hurtful.

I think the entire situation is just becoming somewhat of an emotional burden to me, and as much as I looooove SAM, I just can't keep failing at this. As hard as I try, sometimes I just want to win. And I'm losing it, I'm losing all of my resilience. In everything that I wanted for this relationship I'm just finally writing it off. I'd actually really, really hate to lose SAM because I do think we have something so beautiful, with so much potential but I guess no one can really live this way, can they? We're too poor, and apparently too unlucky to see this thing through.

And even though I'm on my last leg here, I'm still not ready to give up. Sigh, I tried, I really tried to talk myself into being okay with calling it quits but, not only do I haaaaate being a quitter, but I just hate the idea of really, seriously, never seeing him again or talking to him, or anything.

This is the beginning of a broken heart, but now I've got too much life to concentrate on, to even begin to mend it. I guess it's all in the divine plan of the universe now, if it was meant to happen I guess it would.

Episode 12: Define Fear

People always ask what your biggest fear is?
and some people will say "our biggest fear is not that we are inadequate. but that we are powerful beyond reason"

.... I'm gonna go with inadequate and scared.

Which is exactly how I felt when the doctor said you have four abnormalities in your chest.
Unidentifiable, lumpy, something in your chest more specifically, your breast.
Both of them. 

Followed by the lovely referral to diagnostics that said:

HEY NIOMI! Congrats! you've been chosen to get a breast sonogram to make sure you 

DON'T HAVE CANCER. 

Inadequate? Mortified....Terrified.
Ask any average girl what she knows about breast cancer, and she'll tell you... lumps.
That's all they tell us! Check your breasts for lumps
you got lumps? you got cancer.

So suddenly it was real and something needed to be done. Referrals, ultrasounds, biopsy. All in the middle of classes, job searches, LIFE. I'm a psychology major and so if any of you know anything about mental stress, you would know that poor health can put a serious strain on mental health, fluctuate stress levels, impact performance and if YOU KNEW you had cancer... you'd be a little stressed out too.

The worst part about it, is that cancer doesn't really give you some huge tell tale signs. It could just be there one day completely unexpected, and take your life the next. Diagnoses were inconclusive. Everyone said the same thing, we all knew something was in there... we just didn't know what. Breast tissue in young women is too dense for mammograms and even difficult for ultrasounds. While breast cancer generally has a low mortality rate for older women,  in young women? it's usually terminal. 

Suddenly my life was consumed with cancer. The books I was reading, the movies I watched, the conversations I had, EVERYTHING, unintentionally reminded me about the unidentified lumps. Well everything except for SAM.

When your grades are slipping, your mind is reeling, and all things in your life seem to be crashing together mercilessly, if you just have one person to tell you, "I'm here for you and you can tell me anything and I'll stay calm for you." It's just enough to remind you that you're human. And you can't always protect everyone else because sometimes.... you're helpless, you're not as strong as you want to be, you need so. much. and the person who needs the most protection is you.

SAM did that to the best of his ability. He was terrified but he was willing to listen to my fears, my morbid jokes, and my sometimes AWFUL conversation lol. He didn't want me to die, he didn't want me to talk about cancer or dying, he didn't want to freak out about anything that wasn't written in stone. And in more ways than one, that was comforting. When someone just checks in to make sure you're okay. Knows you're struggling, gives you a reason to smile. Convinces you it will work out in the end, and never lets your faith down... hey, that might be a person worth keeping around.

This story doesn't have a happy ending, or an ending period. I deferred my biopsy until after graduation so as far an anyone's concerned I'm still in limbo. But hey! life gives you all types of challenges I'm just happy to be on top, with my faith, and my support system even if some of them are farther than I'd like them to be...

I'm still blessed. 

Thank you to everyone who has been taking this journey with me! 

I'm on my way to cross that stage at Lehigh University Class of '14 grad ceremony and

 I couldn't think of a better gift IN LIFE than to be able to get a hug from this incredible human being in South Africa. 

It would mean EVERYTHING TO ME if you guys would help me out! 

I've entered a contest to win flight tickets to south africa (again) and if you just CLICK THIS LINK and LIKE MY PHOTO, I could win!!! I just need 300 likes to get there so PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE help me out and like the photo. Share it with even just one more friend and ask them to like it too! I'd really appreciate the help guys and I've got one month to do this and if you help I'll love you forever!!!

P.S. I know this was a tough topic but if you have a thought on it , share it in a comment! Or tell me what you would do in SAM's position, and someone you cared about shared similar news with you.

Episode 11: Put You On the Team!

Check-In: It's been about a week since I've last gotten a chance to write and it feels like a LIFETIME! My life has been on a roller coaster lately and it is the SCARIEST thing in the history of the world, but I'm living it. Anyway, I realize I haven't been mentioning blissful moments lately so TODAY! we shall get into the bliss of long distance.

SO! Saaaaaam is .... wow, I don't even know what to say, he's just different... for me anyway. He just really indulges me. For instance,  I told him I wanted a picture, he sends me 5, plus  voice recordings and ALMOST a video but I think he forgot about that lol. And the other day we were playing with an app to see if we would have ugly kids or not (don't pretend like you haven't done it!) and .... turns out SAM thinks our kids are ugly unless they have some photo editing sooo... there's that. But otherwise it's really nice to get attached to my phone sometimes and just make our own little fun. It's different because in South Africa, we would text all the time but then we would see each other and talk and hang out and now we don't have that option. BUT!

Ladies and Gentlemen I forgot to mention that I have been dutifully trying to get back to my love. Most recently, by trying to get the attention of natural hair blogger HEYFRANHEY! So basically Fran is offering one of her subscribers tickets to go anywhere in the world [naturally you know where I want to go] ...

Straight to South Africa to make good on all my promises!!! 

It's only 5 days worth of a trip but I could use those 5 days!!! And all I can imagine is just the moment I get off that plane and he's there, and I'm there, and you've got that face of someone who hasn't seen someone they think about everyday for a year, and then suddenly its just happened... and all these scary, exciting emotions come rushing into you and you don't know whether you're going to scream or collapse or puke. ..... lol yeah that's definitely what it will be like. But he is calm; so maybe SAM will hug me, and tell me that he missed me. And maybe we will take a taxi van back to Chesterville/Cato Manor and I'll take in the sights, sounds, and smells of the country I've secretly missed ever since America called me home. I can meet his mom or maybe his dad, and they will look at me funny as I try to impress them with my Zulu, which is awful.


Or I'll visit my South African granny and little sister and everyone! Take pictures to share with everyone who has been supporting me on this blog, supporting my journey, sharing their advice and experiences with me. It would just be sigh, Amazing. I know some people out there are going to read this and be like oh snap! I want to go somewhere! You're more than entitled to feel that way, but if there are others of you out there who really want to see this win, I'd love if you throw a shout out for me with HEYFRANHEY. You could link this blog in there (I know I did), or just like my comment, send her an e-mail, or even post a comment yourself and maybe she'll see just how desperate I am  passionate we all are about keeping love alive over here. But don't worry, even if I don't win, I'm not giving up. I got to make it back at least once to remind myself that this is all real.

#Team Special Delivery <3!!

Me & Lil Sis Zinhle!

P.S. I try to make this blog a complete reflection of what SAM and I go through in a long distance relationship in hopes that it's helpful for others. BUT, have I become the bearer of bad news? Do we need more positivity on this blog or are we doing alright? Let me know! Comment, Share, and.....

LIKE the new Facebook page if you're addicted to the book like I am ^_^ : https://www.facebook.com/foolsfallin