Wanderlustful

There is something scary about getting involved with someone who doesn't live in your country, who has no intention of staying and, in a year's time, intends to fly home, which is halfway across the world. A feeling of dread at the beginning of the relationship that makes you not want to give yourself over even though you heart does. This person before you lights you up in a way that other people around you don't and you laugh wholeheartedly and enjoy walking in the dark, frigid cold for three hours because his hand is warm.

I seem to have this misfortune with relationships; I keep seeing the end, not at the end, but well before it—like a countdown. Every day that passes just brings everything closer to the last day of it all. The fact that these are thoughts in my head after three dates and two weeks of talking is a little silly, a little crazy. But it's hard not to be a littlesilly or crazy when this guy jokes about six months from now and seems to see you still hanging around. Which just makes more questions pass through your mind. What is this? Is this something that could, if all were to go well, continue past the one year expiration date? Will it be like putting bread in the fridge so that it keeps a little longer? Or like cutting mold off of cheese to continue to enjoy it? Or will it be like milk and, once it's gone sour, there's nothing you can do but toss it?

I keep finding myself in these doomed relationships where I don't know where I stand and I keep struggling to find footing. This guy...I like him. His humour is so much like my own and even with only knowing him for this short period of time, I find myself saying the same things as him or stealing his punch lines because I know exactly what he is going to say. I want so badly to find footing but I'm so scared that I'm just another girl in another country that he wants to keep around until he returns home. Then, once he does, it's done. He'll be home for a little while then off on his next great adventure, his next country, his next girl. But he doesn't seem like the kind to just fool around...I've met that kind. I've slept with that kind, which worries me that I'm going to be blindsided again...or that I'm going to find love again and then he is going to go home.

I don't want to be scared. In every relationship I've been in after high school, I've thrown myself wholeheartedly into them, hoping that I'll be caught; that things will work out. And they have. And they haven't. And I've gotten up again...but what if this ends only because he leaves? He takes off on his next great adventure and I'm not there. That he doesn't see me with him in those adventures.

What happens if my heart gets broken again?

We've had this ongoing joke about my having to take him to the aquarium after I mentioned that he should do it, despite being a little strapped for cash, just to see the otters (one of my favourite animals), and as we walked along the sea the other night, we saw three otters. It would have been exciting with anyone because I love—really love—otters, but there was something about standing there with him, barely seeing them in the dark water at night, that was just something else. I joked about no longer needing to take him to the aquarium because I had taken him to see the otters and didn't pay a cent. He rebutted that, as the walk had been his idea, it was he who had taken me to see the otters.

I want him to keep taking me to see the otters.