Saturday was a hard day for me. I knew, when I left seven and a half months ago, that it would be. And that’s because on October 8, two of my best friends got married.

I got a glimpse of the beautiful wedding via the wonders of technology. While waiting for the wedding to start, I chatted with a few friends between my viewings of Dr. Who, expressing the regret of my absence, the awesomeness of Chile, and the anticipation of my return in December.

As the wedding started, my video cut out, but I was still able to hear the ceremony. It was short, sweet, and altogether lovely. And just like that, two of my best friends were married.

This is Brad and Melissa. They are incredible.

Though I was stoked to have been there in some fashion, it was still really hard on me. I didn’t want to be there in some fashion. I wanted to be there. 

Though we’ve only been friends a few years — Mel and I met when we were both wage slaves at Macy’s — I’ve been through a lot with these two. From break ups, to hook ups, to badly thought out make outs, to debaucherous nights and chill evenings over tacos, they’ve been there for me. And, had I been there, I’d have helped with the whole affair. That’s just a part of who I am — a pretty damn dedicated friend to those who’ve been good to me. (Sometimes even those who aren’t all that good to me, but that’s a topic for another day.)

But, over a year ago, I decided to be selfish. Part of that demanded that I put what I wanted before what I thought I “owed” my friends. In that particularly selfish time, I wasn’t talking with them and I felt a bit of resentment – I don’t owe anyone anything, I thought. I want to live for myself, and not for my friends.

So I did that. And in doing that, I’ve learned that I was partially right — I don’t owe anyone anything. But, I want to be there for my friends. I want to give as much as I can.

That’s what makes this travelling and making friends thing really hard. With Brad and Mel, along with all my other friends at home, I’ll be back. I’ll be there for other important things. I’ll be around to give and to give and to help and to hang out and all that. There will be plenty of time to make up for missing all of this time.

But my friends here? I can’t say as much.

You make friends fast when you’re abroad. Brought together by the intense feeling of being so far away from home, connections are formed quickly and deeply. There are late night heart to hearts over a box of wine in those first weeks, there are epic nights out, there’s travelling and sharing incredible sights and experiences. It’s nearly impossible to not forge connections here.

But they’re temporary. But at least with my gringo friends, I can travel fairly cheaply in the US to see them.

But one of my best friends that I’ve made here — or, really, anywhere, is Chilean. When I leave here, I’m not, in theory, coming back. Knowing that I won’t be able to hang out with her six days a week, go shopping with her, make weird noises on the street with her, all of that…that really sucks.

In some ways, I’d rather have a boyfriend that I have to leave. The thing with boyfriends and girlfriends is that you always know that there’s a possibility that they could end. Sure, you try not to entertain the idea too much, but it should be there, lingering in the back of your mind somewhere. But with friends, it’s different. There aren’t any reservations in deepening your connections, opening yourself up like there are in relationships — in that way, it’s almost more dangerous to make friends abroad than to get into a relationship.

A good friendship can be just as intense as a relationship. There’s a lot of love in a good friendship, a lot of conversation, a similar closeness. Leaving that can be even harder as a boyfriend or girlfriend — because when I return to the US, I’m not going to be on the lookout for a new BFF. For one, I have several really close friends. But on top of that, you can have many close friends at a time. It’s leaving a relationship hanging on a thread, entering a perpetually forever LDR.

That’s why I’m so torn about the fact that I’ve booked my plane ticket home. Yes, I’ll get to see my friends and family again, and I’m stoked for that. But I’m also leaving all of my friends here, many of them forever.

This is probably redundant, but I’m having trouble tearing the concept from my mind. Leaving will be incredibly difficult on me.

me and chilean twin. connected, both physically and symbolically.

Also, today I learned that if you lock yourself out of your apartment, the doormen will work really hard to get you back inside. They’ll walk to different locksmiths so you don’t have to go outside without a bra while you hold your wet bras in your arms. I love this country.

I’m a narcissist. Nothing inspires me and gets me to writing more like writing about myself. I mean, I have a blog, so that much should be self-evident.

This is my third birthday post on this blog — crazy, right? It’s no secret that time goes a lot faster as we get older, but that doesn’t make the reality of it any different. I started this blog when I was 23. Today, I’m 26.

And it never fucking fails to surprise me just how much life can change in a couple of years — from unhealthy relationships to nearly perfect ones. From a handful of friends to a bushelful, now in cities all over the world. From a together family to a more fractured one. From startling depression to sometimes overwhelming happiness, then back down again and then back up. In just two years. 

So fucking weird.

Birthdays are pretty significant for me, because in my head, THAT’S the start of a new year, much more so that New Year’s. Resolutions are usually kept when I vow to make a change on my birthday, I reflect more on the changes that year has seen — I just always see it as a new beginning. A fresh start.

So this is me today. 26 years. Working toward 27.

I don’t look the same as I did last year, or the year before that. Maybe I look older, have more of a mom haircut…but that’s a long story that I don’t want to get into.

I’d be lying if i said that I wasn’t looking forward to this coming year. Even though parts of my life will be dramatically different in a bad kind of way when I return in December, there’s plenty to look forward to — living with one of my best friends, living in the same city as my boyfriend (finally…I mean in the 6 years of my life that I’ve had a boyfriend, I’ve never lived in the same city as one), hopefully working a job that I actually enjoy, despite the field, of course.

When it comes down to it, my life is pretty together. I have a lot to go home to, and that makes me feel lucky — but it also makes me proud. Nothing I have waiting is really a result of luck. I have a boyfriend and good friends and family that loves me because I work hard to keep those relationships healthy and functioning, and I’d put myself out on multiple limbs to form those relationships to begin with. That, in itself, used to be completely contrary to my nature. I have some kind of job because I worked hard and stuck with my series of crappy jobs until something paid off — and it did.

It’s something that sets me apart from the pack here in Chile. Most of my friends are a few years younger and, as we find ourselves three months till our program’s end date, are trying to figure out their next move. Some have pololos here, some don’t. Some want to stay, some don’t. Most wonder what their new adventures will be, and are talking about moving to different cities in Chile, different countries in South America, or different continents altogether.

I’m a little jealous of their adventures, sad that I started this travelling thing so late in my 20s… comparatively speaking, of course. Some of them have said that once you go home, you’ll never leave again.

I got a little irritated with that remark. I’m going to make travel a priority in my life — after this experience, there’s no way I couldn’t. Maybe I won’t ever live abroad again, but I’m okay with that.

The end is approaching fast — I’ll be buying my plane ticket home within the next week, with any luck. It will fly by. But at least I can make the most of it. And at least I’ll be bullying myself to blog about it.

I’m back! (maybe.)

I went to Mendoza, Argentina the weekend before last.

After two days of wine tasting, olive oil testing, liquor and chocolate trying, wandering, and frolicking, my friends and I loaded ourselves onto the 10:30 bus back to Santiago. Once comfortable in my front row window seat (by far the best seat on the bus for overnight trips), I leaned my head back to watch the people outside. Families were hugging one another, laughing, giving last kisses and hugs, singing their farewells with that odd combination of joy and sorrow.

There was a young couple lingering in the back of the crowd. They weren´t really speaking or going through the nonsense of hugging or kissing anyone else. They simply stood in each other´s arms, watching the chaos around them. Occasionally, he would hug her more tightly and they´d turn to look at each other. They trade weak smiles and she´d lean into him, eyes closed, breathing in deeply.

I recognized this kind of goodbye. It´s one with which I´m well acquainted. It´s the slow, quietly emotional, el-dee-are goodbye.

LDR. Long distance relationship.

There´s no pretty way to say it. There´s no romance in it. There´s nothing at all pleasing about that string of words.

But that´s fitting, since there´s very little pleasure in a relationship based solely on letters on a screen, a voice on a line, and some pixels organized in some fashion to create an image of your loved one´s face.

It´s funny how the idea of a long distance relationship, when you don´t define it in that term, becomes something else. The idea of a person thinking about you from a million miles away. The idea of letters filled with words of longing, of hours spent giggling on the phone, talking the night away. The idea that you love someone solely for their mind, their ideas, and the communication between the two of you. Absence making the heart grow fonder and whatnot.

And sure, that´s part of the LDR deal. communication, as in any good relationship, will grow and blossom. In a bad one, it´ll become repetitive and begin to foster resentment.

I should know. I´ve spent the majority of my adult life in long distance relationships.

I swore after my last one that I´d never do it again. After five-or-six years spent pining after someone who wasn´t even right for me, the idea of entering into another relationship — well, any relationship, but especially long distance — was a really terrifying thought. I had wanted to just hang out with friends, maybe try the whole dating thing to see how that went before leaving everything and jetting off to Chile. That was the plan.

I let a friend read my super secret blog once. He didn´t comment on the boys, the secrets, the sex, the lust, or the love. The only thing he asked me was, ¨”Why do you always leave when you find someone?”

It´s not intentional. Things just work out like that. I plan to leave, I fall in love.

When I met Jeremy, I didn´t fall for him instantly. I thought he was so charming, and so nice, but I didn´t see it going very far. I couldn´t tell you why — I just didn´t.

But then he grew on me. Like a wart, as I always tell him. So when the time was approaching for me to leave, I was torn between breaking it off and making it work. I had advice flowing from every person I knew, and none of it was very consistent. Even if I wanted to make a decision based on what everyone around me thought, it wouldn´t have been possible — it was divided right down the middle.

So I finally said to myself, “If it ain´t broke, don´t break it. If it breaks en transit, it breaks en transit. If it doesn´t, it doesn´t.”

And thus far, it hasn´t. It´s not something I like, and it´s not easy, and after this, I really am never doing it again.

Here´s what I´ve learned about LDRs. They´re not easy in any scenario, but they´re doable.

• You can´t get into them unless there´s a pre-defined stop time. That was the difference between this one and that other one. I´m home on December 24th. I have to move to Seattle shortly after. There is a forseeable place and time that we can stop calling ourselves a long distance couple.

• You´ve got to have a certain amount of pre-defined independence. With my last guy, we went crazy if we went more than a day without talking. We were on the phone at least three or four times a day, and we were chatting online the rest of the time. Our relationship was the central part of our lives, so I was never really experienced anything outside of that.Things are different now. Yes, I chat with Jeremy quite often via GoogleChat. But we only Skype once a week, and if I travel we rarely talk. It´s difficult because, yes, I want to know what he´s doing. I want to laugh with him, joke with him, whatever — but my experience here is simply more important at the moment. It´s really important to have priorities — and long distance love shouldn´t be priority number one.

• When you talk, don´t fall into the “You have no idea how much I miss you!!!” trap. Talking about real life things and ideas and what´s happening day to day sometimes seems trivial compared to the heartache you feel, but when you finally DO get to see each other again, there´s almost nothing to talk about. It´s easy to build a long distance relationship on the heart grows fonder scenario, but it´s infinitely less likely to last once you get back to real life. I´m chalking that transition back into real life as the second reason my last relationship failed.

Back in Argentina, everyone had filed onto the bus. The couple I´d been watching held their foreheads together, saying words I wouldn´t be able to understand were I right next to them. Finally, after a short kiss and a hug, she stepped onto the bus with her Chilean Passport in hand. His eyes followed her as she found her seat in the back of the bus. His eyes were begging her to turn around and get off the bus.

As we pulled away, he gave a short wave, but didn´t stop watching the bus until we´d pulled out of the station.

I tried to may no mind to the fact that “Right Here Waiting For You” was playing on the bus´s awful radio. Instead, I just hoped that they could make everything work.

And here are some pictures from Mendoza. I know that´s what a lot of you really want.

Lots of wine tasting, since Mendoza is known as wine country.

Wine barrels in the second winery -- mmmm!

We also visited an olive oil press. Which was great because they fed us lots of delicious things.

Argentina is also known for their beef. And this might be the best steak I´ve ever had.

Me in Plaza Independencia