2011 was an interesting year. For the next 11 days until Dec 31, I’m taking a bit of time to reflect upon some things that happened over the year that made an impact upon my life. Whether they be large events or seemingly small, they are all important. Here they are, in no particular order. 

When people ask me how I and my boyfriend met, I often hesitate to answer with, “online.” I know it’s not out of the norm for people to begin relationships via the internet nowadays, but I never envisioned myself as that sort of person. Heck, I don’t even feel comfortable with online shopping. Granted, we met under rather specific circumstances: I happened to be over at our mutual friend’s place while he and our friend happened to chatting over Skype. And so we were introduced over two webcams, one in Vancouver and the other in Adelaide. From there, of course came the Facebook friend add, then the phase in which one creeps the other’s photos and sends the odd message now and then, building up over a few months to the point where we agreed to chat face to face (well, webcam to webcam) once more.

Now, I had never personally used Skype up to this point, and being the sort of shy awkward person who’s never quite great at starting conversations I was terrified. Yes, from what I knew of him based on our Facebook interactions, I thought he was attractive. But of course, he was living in Australia, so there was no chance that anything could ever come out of this mild internet flirtation. That’s what I thought at the time. Thing is, I don’t think I’ll ever regret spending six months getting to know a person through pure conversation before meeting them in the flesh. Turns out I had nothing to be worried about regarding that first Skype conversation; we ended up talking for five hours that night and seven the next until the light of the sunrise broke through my window.

We’d talk about absolutely anything. I would get to meet his friends via shouts of “hello!” and friendly waves to the camera, and he would get to do the same with mine. While I was in the Philippines and with limited internet access, we would still keep in touch by playing quiz sort of games where one would message the other with any sorts of questions about life, love, whatever, and the excitement was in the anticipation of seeing how the other person answered and learning more about them. We even planned to go to Hawaii and meet halfway; that didn’t end up happening because he ended up making the trip all the way to Vancouver where he is now living and working. The build up to meeting him at the airport was immense; I couldn’t avoid the thought that he might find me unattractive in real life. And yet, everything seemed so natural; it was like seeing an old friend again, a person who knew things about you that very few others would know.

And for all that, I am grateful. The entire process, from the first meeting to building towards the relationship that we have in place now, all done mostly via Skype, has been an interesting journey and a learning experience in that it has given me a new perspective of looking at relationships in general. Nowadays, so few people have the opportunity and the time to just sit with a person and engage in conversation for hours on end and I have been blessed in that I have been able to know my boyfriend by that way. We’d go about our lives in our own respective cities with the other on our mind, and he had the wonderful idea of starting a blog on which we could share our lives with each other. It became a collection of photos, videos, and even poetry where I could show him my favourite spot in all of Vancouver and he could have me experience the sunset at the hills behind his home. Here we had a document of our relationship as it began before ever knowing how one’s hand felt in the other’s. Despite being an 18 hour time difference away, we made something out of communication and commitment.

I still can’t believe that he is here in Vancouver, and when I ask him why he didn’t travel here sooner (before we had met, he had originally been planning to travel to Vancouver but those plans fell through), he told me that the only factor that changed was me. It’s been over a year since we last met in our friend Kenton’s dorm room; from there came dropped Skype calls, pricey international postage, photo and video blogging (with hilarious and embarrassing results), and “can you hear me now?’s”. Where this is to goes is still unknown but regardless of the end result, I am grateful.