3 Things to do when you receive THE News

Looking forward to tomorrow...

Coming down from my 7th year anniversary high, I've realized that I haven't shared the humble beginnings of my LDR. Penelope and I both are in LDRs but share different perspectives. I am in a relationship with an OFW.

It all begins when you receive THE news of the fly out.

Let it sink in…

Dodong and I were happily cruising along our steady relationship. We saw each other almost everyday, meeting up at the Gold's Gym Galleria after work (we work in waaay different industries and malamang offices) and going home together (since we lived a few villages away from each other).  And then one day, BOOM! One of his raffle entries actually won! Raffle entries is what we call job applications abroad. I know I was wishing this for him to be able to get the big bucks but I was caught off guard when things were just steady…

For 2-3days, I was always silent in our bus trips home. I was absorbing the thought that one day soon, no one would be holding my hand during the 1-hour bus rides or no one to laugh out loud with when watching movies or no one to easily drag to random food trips. This was really was it.

Know the exact day (and time) when is he going to leave

I learned about it before Valentine's Day 2008. And he was scheduled to leave before March 15th. I made him kulit everyday on the exact details of the flight out. Of course, he couldn't confirm on the date until the very day he got his actual ticket (I cannot forget that day: March 9, 2008!). I did my own countdown and made sure I planned out the things I wanted to do with Dodong before he left. So many things I wanted to do but so little time….

Compute for the time difference

Once it was final that Dubai was the destination to be from Dodong, I asked around and Googled what was the time difference between Manila and Dubai. A friend actually emailed me a pretty useful tool: Time Difference Calcultor to help me out (and other couples in LDRs too!) .

Anyways, since I got the actual time difference (Manila is 4-hours ahead of Dubai), I started practicing adjusting to the time diff. So if it was 4PM Manila time, then it would be 12NN Dubai time and so on and so forth….

Let it sink in again…

I know I said only three things but this is strangely the fourth one. This a repeat of the 1st thing to do. I swear, you NEED this. I did. I took time off (at work most of the time since this was my time apart from him) to really just absorb the fact that Dodong would be leaving me, physically in this case. I was afraid, a lot of what-ifs were going through my head (Remember I was traumatized by my family experience…). But I really couldn't do anything because it was (well, it did. duh.) happening…

SIGH.

How about you: what did you do once you got the big news?

Love the distance,

Inday I. Nagintay