Before we begin, NEW CABY SITE. NOT A DRILL. PLEASE GO VISIT IT. OLD FLASH GAME VIBES ARE EVERYWHERE. IT'S ADORABLE AND IT'S FUN.
Paired with that, she wrote a journal last night while I was out getting snacks from Lidl with Trys, and she's been chewing on a lot of the same thoughts that I have about leaving. It's a phenomenally bittersweet thing, more so than last time. It's become so natural, this trip has been so relaxed, so domestic, and yet I am so much more aware of myself and what I'm capable of on my own as well, so I'm no longer in the big rush to move here. There's a CabyCammy, but there's just as much a Caby and a Cammy again, if you know what I mean. Let me give you a bit of context.
Last time was much pressure. Lockdowns caused us both to become very clingy and hyperaware of one another, offline and on. We were bad at communicating, yet constantly worried about the other person. Understandably so! We hadn't visited friends long-distance before, let alone a partner. We never had to come right out and tell another person how we were feeling. I had a bad habit of wanting things from her I'd never ask for. That stuff takes a toll on you, and it separated us. Not to the point of us separating, but y'know, emotional distance, being protected. Being both incredibly reliant on the relationship and very scared of things going horribly wrong constantly.
It was a bumbling fucking mess, but the good news is that we're both problem solvers and absurdly dedicated. There was never a "let's break up" moment, we knew that wasn't the solution. Regardless of how much frustration we caused each other, we'd have long talks and figure out what we needed together, from each other and from ourselves, and ironically, what we found was we needed to become separate people again in order to be a stronger couple.
Consider the timeline. 2018 was a stressful year for her and I both, with school that we were not ready for starting, Neocities getting us some of the most white-hot infamy we'd ever been under, and suddenly having better friends to open up to for the first time. That's a lot going on emotionally. 2019 still had the new car smell, and 2020 and 2021 were spent stuck indoors and effectively hallucinating being a couple because we had no idea when we'd ever see each other for real. You pick up a lot of bad habits, and I already had a lot of pre-existing bad habits because of Brianna suicidebaiting me as a teenager. Being 14 and wondering if your new friend would be alive next week is a recipe for being a clingy person, to put it nicely.
To give you an example, there was a very conscious thought I had back then, specifically after Rocks the 360 came out, to drop literally everything that wasn't drawing so I wasn't off spending months on projects she felt left out of. She's in school now (and doing not just better than she did the first time, but also better than most kids in her class, frankly) and has her own little personal worlds and of course her following to tend to, lots more to occupy her time, so it's not necessary to keep her company 24/7 anymore. Quite the opposite! She's been nothing but encouraging towards me rediscovering my own personal hobbies with modding and level design and going out and being involved in projects.
I still felt I needed that permission to be myself again though, and reassurance it wasn't going to cause more grief. Since I've gotten it, we've frankly never been better together. I can go out on walks like I want to. I can look at castles and talk about Quake maps and mapping for Garry's Mod like I've really wanted to. I can weave in time together and time spent separately, recharging our batteries so we can be cuddly in the evening naturally, organically, without it being an expectation. We're far less in a rush to make things happen, because we trust each other to be there when the time is right. We're relearning how to be a couple, the right way this time.
I am starting to realize it's okay to like things outside her, even to fantasize outside of her as well. I like boys as much as I like girls (maybe the year spent talking to a crossdressing Filipino guy should've clued me in). There's things I like to draw that are squarely for me, hobbies I have that are solely my own, and I don't feel like I'm neglecting anything to indulge in those things anymore. I have projects waiting for me when I get back. I've realized how much I miss my mom, how much I have to see in the US still, and how much more I want to be before I have to take the gargantuan leap towards being independent in a foreign country. The UK might look superficially similar to the US, but then you're surrounded by voices that don't sound like yours, phone numbers that are formatted weird, so many roundabouts, cars we don't have, chippies instead of sandwich places, Costas instead of Starbucks, and of course in Wales, an entirely different language, and you realize "fuck, I really am in another country".
I don't want to do that yet. I love the UK, I love Wales, and everything here has been very, very nice—but the culture shock would kill me if I tried that now.
Of course, it's still sad it's ending. This time really has been phenomenal. I'm gonna miss the good chats with her family, wandering around at night and during the day, picking up Caby at university so we could walk into Cardiff Central for snacks and plushies and CDs and DVDs and PC games, having someone sleeping in the same bed as me. I'm gonna miss the day trips and the laughs about "dark thunder" and Mr. Brain's Pork Faggots on supermarket trips and heading into Americandy because they're the only place around here that has imported Takis and TGI Fridays Potato Skins chips. Cardiff is such a wonderful city, and if you can visit it someday, you so should.
The good news is, though, I miss home just as much. I feel far less like I need to be here to be happy in life. There will be another time, and we will go nuts next time too.
One week until I'm back in the US. This would be the headlining piece in most other journal entries, but for now, just enjoy what I received in the mail last night. Expanded, limited edition reissue Conet Project boxset, all five discs, all mint condition, all extras included. I way overpaid to make sure I could get it, because it is unfathomably hard to find, and ordering it here meant I could avoid eating the international shipping costs. I feel like I own a piece of military intelligence now, but the good news is that customs apparently doesn't ask much anymore unless you're bringing expensive liquor, electronics, weaponry, or furniture back into the country. Least, that's my hope.
