One year and counting

One year ago - on this exact date - I was a bit nervous; it was the day before my first face-to-face with Gorgeous (well, she hadn't turned into Gorgeous yet at that point) and apart from being my first date in a while, it was also my first date with someone I'd met on ye olde interweb. Here we are, one year later, and things have turned out pretty well - great, even.

Over the course of a few Summer months, Cute and Nervous Date blossomed into Gorgeous, and these last 8 months we've met each others' friends and families, we've laughed and cried together, traveled together, made and eaten a number of dinners and cakes together, watched way too many seasons of a number of TV series together and seen a reasonably balanced mix of chick flicks and guy movies. We've exchanged strengths and weaknesses, musical preferences, hugs, kisses, hickeys and zerberts; we've learned a few new things about our respective cultural backgrounds, made some small and some slightly bigger plans together, developed some routines and habits (some good, some... interesting), looked each other deeply in the eyes and said profoundly silly things and sometimes said profoundly serious things while looking rather silly. Hey; it's a balancing act and we're doing pretty good so far.

So, I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly say "Thanks!" to Gorgeous for hunting me down and... uhm... I mean, for changing my life for the better - mind you, it WAS pretty good to start with, but there's always room for improvement - and for bringing that perfect blend of love, appetite for life (and food - especially the yellow, banana-shaped kind), insanity, spontaneity, noise and silence into my life. U are teh roxxor!

Space

(Disclaimer: if my somewhat overactive brain has somehow nicked any central themes or ideas here from your favourite song/movie/book - then I assure you it's purely coincidental and all in your mind. Really)

Space is a strange thing. No, not that big, unfathomable darkness in which our tiny speck of a planet is hanging, but space as in that somewhat smaller area that's surrounding us at any given time. Space breathes, it expands, collapses, twists and warps and can turn from a comfort zone to a cage in a fraction of a second. It can be a massive field of freedom or a suffocating void of emptiness. Space - or lack of it - is what makes a room seem crowded even when occupied by just two people, or a crowded room seem enormous and empty - apart from that person whose space you share at the moment.

Space has voids: not the mind-bogglingly huge ones, but the small, people-sized ones. Ever noticed that special emptiness left behind by someone close or special to you? It's not the same space that was there before, but a space without meaning, without substance. Space without substance may seem like a ridiculous idea, but I suspect some of you know the feeling (or a similar one, although differently phrased): like the face of a loved one suddenly missing from a family photo, the image incomplete – something is missing.

Why this sudden obsession with space, I hear you ask. Well, my space (not MySpace) has been invaded. It was not a hostile invasion, but a quiet, comfortable one. I made some feeble attempts at resistance, but this space-invader (pun intended) was a cunning and stealthy opponent and I was outsmarted, out-gunned – my line of defense broken and left crumbling in the hands of the invader. Slowly, the space in which I've been residing started growing, its outer perimeters harder to monitor and the invader found a way in – and my space will never be the same again. For now, this invader's space and mine seem to have formed a symbiotic relationship – each person's space leaving a vacuum in the other one's when that person is not around.

My space is no longer empty. :)