and however remote that chance I feel like grabbing it with both hands because being apart from her, thinking we'll never be together again, hurts so much. This was always going to happen, this pain and yearning, and I'm starting to wish we'd prepared ourselves a little better for it instead of ignoring it and putting it off until we parted. At least we might have been prepared for the sheer scale of heartache we're both feeling.
Along with the huge motivation to agree to stay together comes a fair amount of uncertainty, speculation and fear. The point of this post is to explore some of my fears in a little more detail so I can get them a little clearer in my mind.
I'm staying here
I've just got the perfect house, my family and friends are here and my daughter's family and whole support structure is here. It's crossed my mind to up sticks and try and make a fresh start in Australia but it's a big undertaking and I don't want to take daughter out of her comfort zone. So, if it were to happen, it'd mean her coming all the way here from Australia - something she's expressed a desire to do before we hooked up, but not for three years. I'm just not sure my little dead-end town is enough for her - she's a country girl but I fear there's not enough here to encourage her to put down roots.
Her parent's reaction
Before all this happened, I think if my daughter came to me at 18 and said she'd fallen in love with a 35-year old man with a 14-year old daughter, I'd have gone fucking mental. Now I've lived it, felt the love, shared the life, I can see how it works. The age difference is just that, an age difference and nothing else. She can be mature, I can be immature. We get on famously. I remind myself that there's a reasonable age gap between her mother and father which comforts me somewhat.
However, their reaction to the news that their daughter could be moving to the UK to be with a guy sixteen and a half years older than her is likely to be overwhelmingly negative. I'd like her mother to know because I think she could be a good outlet for what she's going through, but I don't know her and I'm unsure as to how she'll react or if/how she might try to help.
Time
Three years. Three years. It's a hell of a long time. The earliest she could possibly come back even for a visit has to be at least six months and that's assuming we could get the money together for her ticket. The earliest she could move here is around a year, and that's only with a huge amount of luck and/or money.
Three fucking years, my god. I'll be 38, she'll be 22, daughter'll be 17 and will start learning to drive. That all seems so far away but I'm constantly reminded that time flies. If that three years was punctuated with regular meetings and constant communication I might just be able to do it.
Distance
My god, it's a long way. Each of our meetings, however irregular, would involve around thirty six hours of travel each way plus associated jetlag for eleven- and twelve-hour time differences. A fair proportion of the time one of us is awake, the other is asleep, so internet chats are limited to particular times and will be even more limited once I get a new job and she starts university. This isn't the end of the world because the world is a smaller place now, but the distance feels like too far at the moment.
Pain
The constant ache of wanting to be with someone I can't be is not something I'm sure I can handle. The repeated missing of someone after meetings could be so difficult, even when balanced against the elation of seeing them again and spending quality time with them. Waaaah waaaaah emoooo oh god it hurts and all that yeah, but it fucking does. See? I never type like that normally.
Availability
There's two parts to this. Firstly, I feel like I shouldn't tie her down while she's about to spread her wings and go off to university to build what she's going to become in the future. I'm confident she's going to meet all manner of wonderful people during her journey through university and maybe even meet someone who she's attracted to. That hurts to think now but I'm trying to be realistic. I'm not sure it's fair to tie her down during a time when she should be finding her place in the world. Maybe she's already found it, I don't know.
Then the other side. I've recently become "me" again, these past couple of years have been so incredibly good for me in terms of self-development and rediscovering who I am and how I want to live my life. During the past six months I've become more confident in myself and my ability to live life, and also in my male... ness. Apparently, I'm attractive to some people! Who knew?! Believe me, this is as much of a shock to me as it is to you, dear reader. But since my ego was pumped and since meeting my love... well, damn, I don't know how to put this without sounding horrible. I don't know. I kind of want to get on with it. I've waited for so long to become me again, and now I'm me I want to share me. Bah, that sounds shit. I mean, if she was here, if she lived here, there'd be no two ways about it, we'd be forever. I don't know what I'm trying to get at. This whole paragraph is a mess. If you have the faintest clue what I mean, could you let me know?
Money
I'm not the richest of folk by any stretch of the imagination, and as she's heading off to university we'd be facing a long, uphill struggle to get enough cash together for regular meetings or to fund her eventual transition over here. It's not impossible, particularly if I get another job and she follows up opportunities for tutoring and stuff once she's underway on her course.
Man, that's a whole barrel of negativity right there, although I appear to have balanced many things out with counter-arguments.
What it comes down to is this: I love her, she loves me, and we're desperate to stay together because of the wonderful and effortless nature of what's been before. There are many barriers in the way, but if we can plan or foresee ways around them maybe, just maybe, we can make it work.
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