MISS BEHAVIN’

Part 2

4/4/13 - SG sends me a Facebook message out of the blue. I can’t believe it. We were back on track!!

5/4/13 - We schedule a Skype chat. It goes for 5 hours. We catch up about everything from the past 12 months of our respective lives. Nothing has changed. All the same feelings clearly there for both of us.

6/4/13 - We switch to WhatsApp and are basically in constant communication whenever the other isn’t sleeping or at work. Compared with our conversation before the year of absence (where I ignored her attempts to make contact) the tone of the texts is now very different. I’m not trying as hard. I’m not as desperate. SG is leaning in. It's very “pre-relationshippy” for lack of a better word. Playful, flirtatious banter back and forth - 100% reciprocated.

7/4/13 - I start learning to DJ and quickly become get absolutely obsessed 

8/4/13 - SG throws out a suggestion "What if... I came over (to Sydney) in July.. For my summer holiday.. You know, just to see what it's like…”. I say "I would VERY much like that…”

11/4/2013 - She looks into getting flights 

12/4/13 - SG asks about my music tastes these days; because they changed quite a lot in the time we weren’t talking. I give her a crash course in dubstep and drum n bass, sending dozens of links to songs to try and bring her up to speed. She listens to everything with an open mind, then rates each song on a scale of “good" to “ok" to “bad" to “what the fuck” to “what the ACTUAL fuck” to "Actually despise and my ears will never forgive me for playing this song”. It didn’t matter that she didn’t like most of them. The fact that she was willing to give them all a go and share her honest opinions was a thousand times better than just having her pretend to listen or like them. It was the sort of honesty upon which we could build something real.

13/4/13 - SG voices doubts about “what if we met face to face and it was different” I encourage her to trust instincts 

14/04/13 - After dancing around the subject for 10 days SG finally lowers her guard and we talk as openly as we can about our feelings for each other. SG reveals that she just intended to say hello; nothing more. But then all the feelings came back in the 5 hours Skype chat, I made her the kind of happy she hadn’t been in a long time and it took her completely by surprise. She wanted to say all these “nice things” but couldn’t because she was scared and it was all very confusing. I warned SG that I was about to get real with her and then told her that I felt exactly the same, that nothing had changed, but I needed her to be up front with me and speak her mind. We both felt it, couldn’t deny it, but we were both a bit unsure about what it all meant, and what do to do about it.

15/4/13 - SG tells me she has an amazing plan.

16/4/13 - We Skype to talk details and by the time we ended the call it was official: SG was coming to visit for 3 weeks in July and then returning by the end of the year to live and work as teacher in Sydney indefinitely — something she’d wanted to do long before she met me! I couldn’t believe it. The one thing I’d wished for and dreamt about for years was finally happening. It was all falling into place. It was real!

April-July 2013 - I start scoping out nice schools for SG to work at. She starts making enquiries, making contacts and locked-in some job interviews to sync up with her mid year visit. Everything was going according to plan until…

5/7/13 - SG writes with bad news: her research revealed that she couldn’t get a job in Australia until she had experience teaching 16yo level and above. She had only taught up to 15yo, and she couldn’t imagine moving over the side of the world, away from her family and friends, knowing she was leaving her career behind forever. She’d known for a couple weeks but couldn’t bring herself to tell me that, because of all this, she couldn’t move to Sydney, at least not in 2013.

This bombshell came just 2 weeks before SG was due to arrive in Sydney for her 3-week holiday. So we were then faced with a tough decision: knowing that she can’t move to Australia and I can’t move to England, does she just come over anyway? Stir up all our old feelings even more, make the connection even deeper and take us right back to where we started the first time? Or should she just cancel the flight and avoid all the pain? In what I still consider to be one of my biggest blunders on any matter to date, I told her not to come.

17/7/13 - She cancelled her flight and our dream was on life support once more 😢

* * *

In the months that follow this turning point, we keep chatting on WhatsApp every other day. Still bantering back and forth but there’s another tone shift. You can feel that we're clearly both gutted by the fact that circumstance had foiled our plans again. Even throughout this time though, when days or weeks would pass before the other replied, we’d still have sudden moments of connection, a wavelength, a sign that there was still hope for us; especially over Skype — which we’d still make time for every few weeks. We’d talk about everything, just as we always had. Although physically distant, this brought us closer. The most amazing thing was when we’d run out of things to say. It was far from awkward. We’d just sit there in silence staring straight into the others eyes — sometimes for minutes at a time. The look on her face in those moments told me more than any number of words ever could: she felt exactly the same as I did. There was still hope. 

Another thing that kept me believing was reciprocal gift giving. SG had always given AMAZING presents for birthdays and Christmases. This particular year, my gift came on 9/11/14: breakfast socks picture (because she knew I’d love them, and I did) and One Direction CD signed by her (because she knew I’d hate it). I remember being absolutely floored by this. It was perfect. She was perfect. Still perfect. 

25/12/13 - we exchange well wishes on Christmas Day, debating about why the other’s way of celebrating was weird: a white UK xmas vs the 40 degree Aussie version. 

28/12/13 - SG raises another travel suggestion - "Right, question, what plans do you have for August 2014?… I'm going to be around Asia way for the summer… And I plan on going to Bali for about a week near the end of August… So I was thinking maybe if you were free and wanted a week holiday you could come join me... :-)”

We spend January 2014 going back and forth trying to work out logistics for Bali. We don’t have much luck. 

We don’t really talk heaps in Feb - April 2014 due to schedule mismatches. SG goes to Japan with her sister. 

June 2014 - we’re STILL toying with the idea of me coming to Bali but identify 2 major road blocks. 1) I’ve only been in my new Physio job — first job out of uni — and don’t feel I could ask for a week off already, and 2) lack of funds

22/7/14 - Getting frustrated with all the plans that almost work but never actually do, I say "So I was thinking, this time last year… You were SOOOO CLOSE to coming… We've tried and failed to meet up god knows how many times since you left… I think it's about time we got our act together…” and go on to propose her coming to Australia for Christmas 2014. A quick look on Skyscanner reveals flights to be extortionately expensive and that planned is killed in its crib. 

4/8/14 - at pretty much every stage of the saga, whether things were going with or against us, whenever one had a dream about the other, we'd tell them. I found quite a few when reading through the years of conversation in preparation for this recount. Some sweet, some bizarre. This is just one of mine: “Just had a lovely dream about you… Basically I opened the door of the house I was in and you were like "surprise!”… Jumped on me (of course)… And then we just laughed and smiled for ages… Bittersweet because I woke and realised it wasn't real...not only was it not real but it's not even really possible in real life… Our plans always fall through :(… But the dream was short, hard to describe but it was more feelings than visuals… It just felt really nice, warm, exciting, natural… Very good dream :)” Her reply: "That's a good dream! We haven't made any plans or tried to make plans in a long time… (Bar your Christmas idea of me coming over there - which is just crazy expensive)… And anyway you know that one day it will happen...Who knows when… But.. One day!”. 

September 2014 - SG persuades me to download Snapchat so we can start sharing real time insights into our daily lives

October 2014 - we make vague plans to do Sri Lanka together in July 2015 (remember this for later on)

30/10/14 - I move out of my Erskineville share house and into a 2 bed apartment in Stanmore with one of my friends from that same share house. SG asks for my full address to post Christmas presents. 

November 2014 - banter banter banter

**I have chosen not to focus on it in this timeline, but by this stage along the road I have realised that music is what I’m supposed to do with my life (September 2013), I’ve been DJing clubs around Sydney (alias: Kyphosis - still on Instagram @kyphosismusic if you want to check it out), started learning how to produce, basically spending every spare waking minute diving head first down the rabbit whole, trying to build a life with music at the centre. 

It’s hard to describe just how serious I was about the whole music thing, how important it was to me, how inextricably linked it was to my identity, and how I was not prepared to let anything jeopardise it, especially girls. Because whenever girls had come along in the past, music and all of my other priorities went right out the window. I couldn’t let that happen again. Yet I was having all of these very strong and very real feelings for SG; and still felt deep down that we were meant to be together. 

So on 30/11/14 I sit down to think deeply about the whole SG situation and write the following words in my journal. (This is the condensed version, only using direct quotes though) - "I think i'm scared. Scared of getting hurt again, scared of risking my currently solid emotional state and hav(ing) to start again, scared of the effect that (it) would have on music scared of getting my hopes up and getting let down again… it doesn't make any logical sense and (it) would sound crazy to most people but i love this girl. i fucking love her to bits… the only contact we've had is Skype… for the last 5 years… but i look at her face and it just makes me smile [Verse 2 Miss Behavin’]... you know how seriously i take music and how literally everything else in my life comes a laughably distant second place relative to it… but somehow and i don't know when, (SG) has just slid in on up there… for her, i'd move mountains and boulders. [Verse 2 Run Away] i (would) do absolutely anything to make it all work out. i must commit (I think i know that i already have.) i committed the day i wrote MMWT [met my wife today] in my journal shortly after we met. i've got to come to terms with my feelings for her. they're real and they're strong and they're not going anywhere. I love her, and i need to make this happen… i am going to crash tackle her in an airport THIS YEAR. no matter what… and i'm going to tell her that i don't want to live a life without her in it."

The conclusion marks somewhat of a major internal turning point. I was always “serious” about SG but the act of writing my intentions on a page made it concrete. Once I make a definite decision, I pretty much always stick to it. 

1/12/14 - I set 10 goals for 2015, 2 of which are “strengthen goals with SG, Mum and Brother” and “crash tackle SG in an airport"

2/12/14 - I tell SG that I’ve have had an epiphany (the goals and the conclusion in the journal entry i.e. not wanting to live a life without her in it). I don’t tell her explicitly, rather keep it ambiguous and tell her that all will be revealed soon enough. 

4/12/14 - I get an unpaid internship at Your Shot - a DJ competition in which I was a contestant in 2013. Start date March 2015

25/12/14 - SG gets me these tiny vinyl record shaped cuff links that say “Kyphosis” on them. This blows me away. 

18/01/15 - SG floats the outside chance of persuading her sister and father to spend 10 days in Australia at Easter… but then admits the odds of it eventuating are slim so we move on to talk about other holiday plans e.g. Sri Lanka 2015.

She announce that she has a "teeny tiny problem” but she’s working on it… She says she mentioned/raised it to “Dude” and he "wasn't happy" with the idea of SG coming on a holiday with me to an exotic location without him. 

Now, just the mention of this “Dude” bloke was not a surprise to me. I’d heard his name plenty of times over the years because he was the younger brother of SG’s now former best friend (the same bad influence BFF she went to America with just after SG left Sydney in 2010). Their families moved next door to each other in about 2011 and they were super tight. They all had Christmas and New Years together at the same pub every year. Cute. I’d suspected from time to time that there might be something more to their friendship, but always concluded that SG and Dude were simply good friends, like a brother-sister sort of thing, so it confused me a little when she said he would have a problem with us going travelling. 

I sought to clarify: "Are you guys together? Cos if that's the case, he's probably got a point”. Her reply confirmed the the very thing I hoped wasn’t true: "Yeah, we have been since a while before Christmas”. Well, fuck. After taking a moment to get my breath back after that news knocked the wind out, I said they looked happy and that "If I was in his shoes, I'd probably react the same way.” SG tried to rebut by saying that her and I travelling together was basically the same as her going to Amsterdam for the weekend with a girlfriend, which he was fine with. I said “you know it’s not (the same)”… We agreed to leave it and discuss over Skype.