Life since Christopher left has been filled to the brim with work, swing dancing, Russian food, Church, friends and riding my bike around in the crisp autumn air – all things that I love. It’s felt good to be able to completely throw myself into all the activities that I had felt just a little guilty for not being able to commit to 100% when Christopher was around.

The time has just flown by but it also feels like a lifetime ago since Christopher was physically a part of my every life and social plans. It’s sometimes hard to remember specific things to miss or look forward to – all the memories of us have become this vague blur in my head, like a good dream I’m desperately trying to remember in the morning. Thinking about what we had and what we will have again does feel like a pleasant dream at times – too good to be true, but I look forward to it still, this promise of having him back, not just for a visit, but for *real*. It still feels a little too far away to think about too carefully and so I stay focused on looking forward to the next time I get to spend time with him on Skype and use other less meaningful events as date markers instead, concentrating on swinging from one vine to the next: Halloween, cousins coming to visit mid-November, Thanksgiving, decorating for Christmas, and the swing dance competition. All these events lead up to my destination: Christmas vacation and all the time in the world with Christopher – up to 2.5 week’s worth.

We’ve pretty much hit the halfway point in this first stint of separation. I have reason to think it will fly by for the most part, but I also have a slight feeling of dread at the thought of having to endure the distance for just as long as I already have. Has it really only been 6 weeks? It feels like we should have hit the 10 week mark by now.

For the most part, I feel like I have handled the distance much better than expected. I thought I would become more of a hermit, constantly anchoring myself to the computer, that I would always dread going back to a home without Christopher and that I would spend my time pining for him in the most pathetic manner. I had prepared myself to be unhappy without him.

But I haven’t been. Quite the opposite has happened. Instead of leaving myself much time to feel and notice the gaping hole that Christopher left, I immediately rebuilt and redefined life and home for myself here in China. I couldn’t have done so without my roommates. It’s really incredible how that has worked out and I am grateful every day for how carefully watched over I have been.

In some senses, not having the option of just being content to disappear into Christopher has been a good thing for me. It’s made room for me to develop other meaningful friendships and spend the extra time on hobbies that I would have otherwise chosen to spend with Christopher. Getting to know my roommate and becoming best friends with her has been the most rewarding experience for me. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt as closely connected to anyone new, and I’d almost forgotten how much I enjoy breaching the distance between myself and others.

It’s been a really treasured experience for me because I am not someone who often surrounds myself with “girl friends” like many other girls I know, mostly because I’m always too busy with the man in my life at the time to develop those kinds of friendships. I had always thought that personality types and compatibility had a lot to do with how good friends we’d become, but I realize now that while there will always be some people I have a harder time appreciating and clicking with, the only common factor all my close girl friends have had was time: I gave them my time and therefore was rewarded with a special friendship.

The time that I was spending with Christopher, I am spending now with my roommate. We’ve cooked together (I am building my Russian food-cooking skills slowly), have talked about religion (she’s been reading the Book of Mormon and we feed and host the single adults every Thursday for Family Home Evening), discussed our relationships, past and present, personality types, and have learned lots about each others families, and because of my relationship with her, I’ve been more involved in the swing (dance) scene than ever before.

And then, I got a dance partner and started training every day that I could spare for the swing competition that is coming up in December. That started eating into the time that I would spend with Christopher on the computer. I’d come home late and feel like I had to choose between Christopher and sleep. We’d still talk, but not for nearly as long as we had before. That was when I began to feel completely disconnected from him.

I knew that I loved him still but I could not remember how that felt; I wanted to miss him, but I realized that I was no longer waiting to get to spend time with him. It’s not that I ever considered myself anything but his, and I would still call him and be upset if I missed a chance to talk to him, though mostly out of habit. I had done what I feared I would do: emotionally disconnect myself from him as a defense mechanism. I know that really hurt him, that he felt lonelier than ever then, and that if it were the other way around, I would not have taken it as well as he had.

Then one Saturday, I found myself alone, without any social commitments, and with no one to go home to or with – and I was completely lost. The homesickness hit me, like a blow to the gut, and I realized only then that it’d been a month since I’d had time to myself and for myself, and I was at a complete loss of what to do with that time. That was when the emotions had time to come flooding back, and I missed Christopher terribly for the first time in a while.

I realized then that it wasn’t just that I had emotionally disconnected from him, it was that I had completely disconnected from myself. When the craziness first began, it felt good. I felt like I was rediscovering myself in things that I loved but never made time for. It was rewarding and fulfilling and it made me more and more attractive to Christopher.

Balance is something I’m not very good at. With my all or nothing approach to life, instead of Christopher being the all and everything else being the nothing, I did a complete shift and I gave all of myself to the people around me, and as time went by, I found that I had completely melded into the environment and that there was nothing left of me and therefore nothing left for Christopher.

It was subconscious on my part, but I realize now that I’d used social activity as a painkiller. It kept me from having any time to be lonely, and to miss him and ache for him. Somehow, I had decided to completely shift my main source of fulfillment and happiness to social activity instead of the relationship that I had been building with Christopher, and when I came to, I realized that I had overdosed, and while I had impressively increased my ability to do, I had sacrificed my ability to feel.

The distance has been difficult, but not because I find myself longing for his physical presence, as one might expect, or because of how much more work it’s been to maintain an emotionally intimate connection with each other. Mostly, it’s been difficult because since he’s been gone, I’d eked out the place I had in my life that was solely dedicated to loving him: my place, for which without, I am completely lost.

This week, with my dance partner out of town for the next month, I’ve enjoyed the luxury of time. Time to think, feel, love and write, and by recreating this place, I feel like I’ve found myself once more. I’ve rediscovered my music collection and am enjoying how it takes me back to the times I’ve spent with Christopher and how it helps me feel.

Life will still continue to be busy and demanding and sleep continues to come at a premium. However, my focus has shifted and I am learning to leave a little room for me. Most of all, I am learning to use every opportunity to think of Christopher, to miss him and to love him, in the little breaks between the craziness: the 5 minute bike ride home from work, the occasional taxi ride to and from an event, the quick trip to the bathroom at work and the few moments of solitude I have before falling asleep at night. I’ll continue to love him between the seams until I can shift to making him the main event in my life once more.

It probably sounds like an awful contradiction or something utterly masochistic, but the truth is that I’m happiest not when I’m too busy to feel loneliness and pain, but on nights like these where I miss him terribly and am so overwhelmed with my love for him that I cry my heart out thinking about us, what we have, what we’ve built – and what we will have and will build together. It’s during these quiet, tear-filled moments when I feel the most connected to myself, when I can bask in the intensity of the love that I feel for Christopher, and have the reassuring reminder that he remains the most important person in my life.

For emptiness to me, isn’t the lack of his presence, but an existence void of powerful emotions. And tonight, I end the day content and will sleep soundly because I am filled with love.