I came to a  conclusion yesterday: we're all pessimists.

Open your favorite news site, and you'll see perhaps one or two positive headlines. When someone cuts us off in traffic, the first thing we assume is something along the lines of "maniacs!". Let's not even mention how gossip is almost meant to destroy others.

Where's a bit of hope?

Okay, I'm not saying to get the tambourine and patchouli and proclaim world peace and deny the existence of all evil. There's an amount of reality that needs to be obtained; it's good to know about our obstacles so that we know how to overome them. That's fine.

It's the general "glass half empty" attitude that people have towards problems that scares me. Especially when they decide to talk to me about my relationship.

Josh lives in Sydney, Australia. I live in San Juan, Puerto Rico. That's about 10k miles between us. To better explain this, here's an example: I am visiting him (for a month, thank god!) in December. In my case (although it wouldn't have varied much regardless of how I went about it) to get to Sydney, I have to take one plane to Atlanta, Georgia (that's three hours), then one to LAX (that's about four to five hours, I think), then one to Auckland, New Zealand (an award-meriting fourteen hours), then one to Sydney (one and a half hours). Between layovers and flight times, it'll be at least 24 hours of worth of travel time.

We have to maintain our relationship through the likes of phonecalls, emails, Skype, presents and a monthly letter through the mail.

People have given me varied reactions, but I can count with one hand the ones that encourage us to continue in this non-average relationship or congratulate me for finally being happy. In most cases, the reactions are: "Are you insane?", "He's probably cheating on you", "Why don't you cheat on him?", and the most common one, "That's never gonna last". 

My response to them is simple: Fuck you. The people who have told me these things are not (with the exception of one guy) close to me and we don't care much about each other. They don't know me well enough to judge why Josh and I are continuing the relationship.

Yet they feel an entitlement about it to a point where they comment negatively to me on it. It's saddening because a lot of people out there can benefit out of love, need/want it, and for once, I'm not with a man who's making me cry every day! I know (all to well) the hardships about a long distance relationships, and Josh and I have been able to deal with them very well so far and I think it's only the beggining.

Then there's my pessimism. Often, especially during the start of our relationship, I found myself doubting it all. Maybe he was cheating on me. Maybe I'd loose interest in him. Maybe we can't ever live together because I can't move there or he can't move here. What if he met someone more interesting?

All this time, an obvious conclusion escaped my mind: I'm in love with a great man. Everything I've ever asked for, and I'm focusing on the issue of the distance (granted, which is our biggest and only *knock on wood* issue) and loyalty. I also seemed to have forgotten the gravity of his desire to be with me; I've never expected to be loved to a point where he would attempt to move to another continent for me. I forgot that for the first time, my family actually liked the man I was with.

I focused on the downsides, and I kept digging up problems that we might not even ever have. I was as pessimistic as the naysayers were.

It's a good thing that Josh is rarely pessimistic. The fact that he has hope, and continues to work for our happiness not just now but in the future, has slowly chiseled away the pessimism from me. I am focusing now on the many blessings that I've gotten from this relationship and the ones I'll keep getting in the future.

I may be surrounded by pessimists, but I've decided that I'm no longer going to be one.

    

Met through Xanga on 2003. Finally met this summer.

Those days with him were the happiest of my life, but when he went through the gate to fly back home, I cried like I've never cried before.

I'm going to Australia to be with him on December. I get the feeling this'll be a relationship where we have to follow each other around the globe, but if the time I spent with him is any indication, it's worth it more than I can describe.