I went for a walk yesterday

and spent a fair amount of the walk talking to myself. I felt a little mental doing so but it proved beneficial and I came to a number of conclusions and realisations that I’d like to record here.

I usually use walking for headspace. Room for my thoughts and background cognitive processes to work through things I’m thinking about. Recently I’ve been listening to music on my headphones while walking, usually to drown out road noise or the howl of the wind, but it only occurred to me recently that this might be taking away this background processing and removing that benefit from my walking. Yesterday I didn’t take my earphones as it was supposed to be a client walk for the charity, but I’m glad I didn’t take them.

I made a point of talking out loud to myself because, as useful as it is to let my head do this work in the background, I’m afraid I’ve been recently afflicted with an old coping mechanism I’d managed to shift around the time of my last therapy – a musical head. To distract my brain and stop me thinking about things I don’t want to think about, my brain plays music, usually a loop or phrase or lyric, over and over. This is particularly apparent when I wake up as it usually grabs my head and prevents me from getting back to sleep. Strange that it’s there instantly I wake up, and it’s something I’d like to get rid of. In fact, I have a mind-map of things I want to discuss, and it’s worth me checking everything’s on there because maybe that’ll allow me to accept I’ve got the list and I’ll get to everything when I need to, and maybe quiet my mind a little.

Anyway, the talking-to-myself and its conclusions:

1. Tess is not Andrea

Seems obvious, doesn’t it. Thanks to a bunch of stuff that’s happened to me in the past, my brain keeps asking me really challenging questions about Tess, suspecting her of being up to no good or manipulating me. I don’t want to think these things because it seems really unfair on her, and me, and our new relationship, but I decided it’s just my brain trying to protect me based on old events and old defence mechanisms, and that I’m in charge of how I feel now.

I decided there and then that I can only base my opinion of Tess on her behaviour now and in the future, not on what’s happened to me in the distant past. This in much the same way Tess has kindly taken me for who I am and tried to get over things that happened in the past to let me in.

I’m not sure it’s as simple as just saying it, though, and I’d like to look in more detail at these out-dated defences and see what I can do with them because while they still exist in this form, they have the potential to sabotage good things.

2. It’s not as fast and scary as I think it is, and I’ve been integral to the Big Things we’ve discussed

For example, we’ve talked about the future, marriage, kids, the whole works. This has freaked me out a little because I’ve not really been aware where it’s come from, but I managed to put it into context while I was walking and talking.

We first kissed three months ago today; a quarter of a year. We spent almost a whole month in each other’s pockets, bonding, loving, exploring, everything. We had massive highs and crazy lows, we travelled and explored together and just plain got along.

I thought that everything’s happened really quickly but it hasn’t. Looking back, I know there were instances during our time together where I wanted to have her forever, where I’d marry her, where my brain told me we’d make really good babies. I told her I thought I was falling in love with her first; she made a somewhat-sideways joke about marriage and I told her if we were still together in five years I’d be her husband; and when talking about kids I was frank enough to offer my positive thoughts.

Mark said something to me on Friday that got me thinking. He said that he and Kate got together and moved in together quite quickly and that meant he thought there was a danger of them ultimately wanting different things of having vastly different values that meant the relationship might not work. He said that the time and distance we have gives us the opportunity to discover what we both want without the pressures of living together.

Fortunately it appears Tess and I want similar things from life, and I’m more than comfortable that discussions about them appear to have happened rather early-on in our relationship, not least because I, myself, instigated some of them! I suppose it makes sense – if we are to invest ourselves, our life and chastity in someone thousands of miles away, we’d best be sure we’re heading in the same direction. It’s comforting to know that we are.

3. It’ll be up to three years until we’re together

This is something I’ve skirted around because I haven’t wanted to believe it. I’ve focused purely on the idea that Tess could be here in a year and not really thought about the possibility it could be three times that. It is, however, something I’ll have to come to accept: regardless of what happens, what good or bad luck we have, how much we save or how immigration treats us, it could be up to three years until Tess and I are together. If it happens sooner than that, great, but it’s time to accept it.

One tough thing that’s making it hard to accept is that, after I visit Tess and her family in October I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next. We’ve decided to put off talking about visas and other trips and possibilities until the end of this month to give both of us time to think, to let Tess settle into university and basically give us some breathing space. I have to admit, though, that the uncertainty about the future is something I’m finding very hard to cope with, perhaps one of the hardest things at the moment. I’d like to have everything laid out, planned out, a timeline and options and choices and positives and negatives. But there is a big benefit to waiting: it takes some of the pressure off Tess while she’s trying to get used to her new life at university.

So yes, it’ll be up to three years. I’ll be 38, she’ll be 22, Sophie’ll be *faints* 17 and will have a fucking driving licence! It’s not the end of the world, but it certainly feels hard to put into context without knowing what’s happening between now and then, so I look forward to getting it sorted out at the end of the month.

4. Moving-in together straight away isn’t necessarily a bad thing

Because it’s not straight away, is it? My fear here was based on my two previous experiences in moving in with girls straight away – with Andrea it was kind of foisted on my, my kindness was taken advantage of and she turned out to be properly mental. With Cheryl we’d met briefly and had a chance to get to know each other better online before she moved in, but she was properly depressed, entirely not the person I thought she was and really didn’t fit with my lifestyle at all.

With Tess, we’re going to have the next up-to-three-years to be sure we’re both heading in the right direction before we move in together. I’d written elsewhere that moving-in together so soon after we first met felt dangerous based on past experience, but this isn’t past experience, this is the new, the right-now, and if I’m honest I’d overcome my fears to let her move in this moment because I know it’d work, and even if it didn’t we’d talk about it and try to understand why, and try to fix it. This is so far outside past situations I don’t know why I’ve applied old thoughts to it at all, but it’s wonderful to talk it through and get to the good stuff because it definitely seems clearer now.

Yeah, big stuff. I feel better for covering it, even though the process was a little odd. I’m not sure what progress was made in some areas, but in others it’s nice to see that I can have these little realisations while jabbering with myself. It’s also comforting to know that given the opportunity to talk to someone I still have the ability to focus on, and work through, issues I have and reach conclusions. Bring on the new therapy, that’s what I say!