My name is Valerie Henderson. I am 25 years old, from Northern California, originally the East Bay Area. I am a credentialed secondary science teacher in California and Hawai'i. Last year was my first year teaching in Northern California and I am currently not teaching (more about that later!).How did I get here?
Last year, I was student teaching in Humboldt County and for my spring break, I decided to visit one of my best friends, Lisa, who lives in Hawai'i. She's in the Navy and stationed at Pearl Harbor. It was a good visit...I met her best friend, this guy, Tony...He and I connected and we stayed in touch after I went back home to California. Actually, stayed in touch is a little bit less descriptive...we texted all the time and talked on the phone a lot...Then we started skyping. He came out to California to visit in July and we knew that even though we were apart, we wanted to pursue/continue a serious relationship.
Why didn't one of us move to be with the other one?
I already had a teaching job in CA and since he's Navy, neither of us could move to where the other one worked. So, we started our relationship long distance. I won't lie, it wasn't always easy. I had just moved to a new town for my new job, was teaching Bio, Chem, Integrated Science, and Freshman advisory, and I had a long distance boyfriend who was in the military. Talk about a situation I never thought I'd find myself in! (as in never, ever!)
How did we cope with the distance?
1. Skpe! -all the time, every day if we could manage it (except his duty days where he had to be on the ship for 24 hrs
2. texting
3. phone conversations
4. sending mail - birthday packages...random packages, letters, etc!
5. visits - He visited in July, a surprise 48 hr visit in Sept, for Thanksgiving week. I visited for Christmas/New Years, a long weekend for Valentines, spring break, and a long weekend in Seattle (where we got engaged) to meet his family.
6. building and fostering a loving and trusting relationship
7. strong communication - let your partner know how you're feeling, be receptive and/or sensitive to how they are feeling
How can visiting your boyfriend be weird?
You go from not seeing this person or being around them to them being there all the time for anywhere from 48 hrs to 2 weeks. That sounds fantastic and it is but it takes some getting used to. Think about it, you go from not being kissed to picking them up at the airport and trying to share a kiss or a hug without looking totally awkward to everyone else there! You've been living your life solo and suddenly, you have a partner. You go from sleeping alone to having to share you bed (not an entirely bad thing but still takes some getting used to at first). You might even find that you fight. As in, you pick a fight about something but it's like you don't even know why you're annoyed or mad at them. Then, you feel awful because they just traveled all this way to come see you or you traveled all this way to come see them, maybe you're in a different time zone, your plane was full of screaming babies...a million random reasons...
Think about the difference here...in a normal, developing relationship, your time together is moderated. You don't spend all your time together in chunks. Maybe you go meet, exchange numbers, then set up a date. You go on said date and then you can come home and put on sweats and watch trashy T.V. without the other person knowing. Well, when you're in a long distance relationship, it's kind of like instead of wading slowly into the water at the beach, you find the highest rock (maybe there's a rope swing involved) and you hurtle yourself headfirst into the water without testing the waters first. Not saying that you will hit rocks or other unforeseen debris below the surface, just saying that you don't know what's there.
Ok, so to be brief: Tony's ship was set to deploy in June, then they changed the schedule and he wasn't leaving until the beginning of July. They spent the month of May underway and actually came in to port in San Diego so I drove the 9 hours to get there (actually, I picked up my parents in the East Bay for driving help) and got to spend a weekend with him plus, load my stuff (thinking teaching stuff like unit binders and other misc stuff that I knew I wouldn't be able to fit in my luggage when I moved to HI) on his ship.
I moved to Hawai'i 4 days after my last day of school. Yeah, that was a bit stressful. I had to move out of my place in Chico and get all my stuff to my parents' house, set it up/store it. That required getting rid of A TON of stuff from my childhood that I hadn't gotten to cleaning out of my old room...By the time I arrived at HNL...I was soooo tired! His ship got delayed returning (which is why I wanted to schedule my flight for 2 days after the ship was scheduled to return...haha!).We got married on June 16, 2014. It was pretty simple, on the beach. I'd recommend it. Much less stress. We got to spend almost a month together, married. We focused on spending as much time together as we could, knowing that we were going to be apart again for another 7 months.
