Sunday 10 January 2010

Since you've been gone

As I sit here typing, there are tears cascading down my cheeks. I've shed many tears over this particular subject over the last two months. In fact, at one point, I wondered if I'd ever stop crying. I know she's only a phone call away, but I can't begin to describe how much I miss Little Miss LC.

Yes, there will be phone calls, emails and biannual visits, but there won't be gossiping over cosmos, honest verdicts on new shoes/dresses or that sympathetic hug when things go wrong with a guy.

We're all well aware that relationships with members of the opposite sex need to be balanced between physical and emotional, but we forget we need that balance with our girlfriends too. I mean who else would have sat with me for over two hours, as I soaked my injured toe in lukewarm water, in an attempt to peel off a bandage? And who else would have gone out to the pharmacy at midnight to buy sterilised gauze for me? I can't think of anyone else.

It's been a month since Little Miss LC left Dubai's shores, and I still feel the same way today as I did the day she left - sad. As I watched her, the munchkin and Kins pile into the taxi and drive away from their home, I couldn't control myself and the only person left to console me was their maid. Was this a picture of what my life in Dubai would become without my best friend? Comforted by a stranger who probably didn't even know my name.

Images crept into my mind of being sat alone at a seedy bar, drinking a cosmopolitan, with a fat and lonely regular punter draping his arm around my shoulders, telling me tales of how much worse his loved and lost stories were. I shuddered at the thought.

I cried the entire taxi ride home, I cried all night and I cried all day at work. To me, this was the greatest loss I had experienced since my grandmother died when I was eight years old. I'm not sure if I consider myself lucky or unlucky to have not had any great losses in my life. On one hand, all of my loved ones are alive and kicking, on the other hand, it makes even my best friend moving 3000 miles away seem like a monumental loss. I do wonder how I'd cope if I did lose a loved one. My guess is not very well.

Anyway, thankfully, my life hasn't been that tragic. I'm still the girl-about-town that I always have been, but just without someone to enjoy it with. It's strange when I have newsworthy gossip and nobody to immediately share it with. Now I have to take time zones and lifestyle changes into consideration. I miss the instant mutual encouragement - instead, I'm often left agonising over situations on my own for hours before Little Miss LC can call me and put my mind at ease. I'm sure my blood pressure has risen over the last few weeks.

Well, at least there are only 47 days until I'm reunited with Little Miss LC, and I can't wait to be physically close to her again. Laughing together over Skype is just not as funny as laughing together in person, and I can't wait to see her little smiley face rather than an emoticon of one.

Baby, I love you! xx