IT WAS ONE OF those balmy English evenings that feel magical. At nine o’clock, the sun was still well above the horizon and everyone was spilling out of pubs or lying shirtless in London Fields—giddy off a Saturday afternoon that stretched and stretched. There was always such happiness in the heat of this flat city, such rejoicing in the rare lack of grey in the sky. I missed living in London—the sound of the cobbled pavements under my shoes and the buffet of UK accents on the Tube. I had that sort of floaty ecstasy you feel during a long-awaited holiday. In the cab ride to our Airbnb from the airport I had laughed at myself as I even teared up at the sight of the multicoloured brickwork on a terrace house. ‘The bricks, Nina! The charming fucking bricks!’ It was probably just my jet-lagged drunken state, but I was thrilled to soak up the beauty and fun. When my close friend Nina had suggested we indulge in a European summer vacation together, I leapt at the idea. We had been to Paris and Positano before we arrived in London. That balmy evening I was sitting beside Nina at a bar eating tempura for dinner when she thrust her phone at my face.
‘Fuck it, Linda, go for it. You’re both single now, just connect.’
She had opened up a picture of a boy; one of her close friends who I had never met. I had heard her mention him before—his name was Magnus and he lived in New York. Nina is a gifted networker and one of her favourite pastimes is to connect people. During one of our deep conversations as we’d roamed the streets of Paris, I’d explained the guilty liberation I’d felt when I finally broke off my engagement with Ben, as well as the unfolding of my relationship with Dom. I left out the horror story of the nightclub. I still found it hard to share that part. ‘What I actually need,’ I told Nina, ‘is someone in the middle, who makes me feel safe but also inspired. Some sort of balance. I need to not just morph and pretend that it’s all okay all the time.’
In the bar in London, Nina passed me her phone so I could look at Magnus’s photo.
‘I actually think you would really get along; you both like the same shit. Candles, weird techno, food, sex, pooing …’
It was true that those things were pretty much the extent of my interests.
‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘Is he a fuckboi?’
‘No, Linda, he’s lovely. Just text him, who cares! You have literally nothing to lose.’
I liked how much Nina was vouching for her friend, and I felt carefree, full of holiday spirit. Why the fuck not! I took down his number and fired off a message without thinking too hard.
oi. it’s nina’s friend linda. we’re eating fried food and nina thought of you. so hiiiiiiii
Instead of replying to my text, he immediately texted Nina.
oh my god nina! ur friend linda just texted me!
Nina punched out a message.
so fucking reply to her, magnus
Five hours later, he responded to me.
hello. i am eating a piece of fish.
A second later, he sent me a video of a dog sitting next to what I guessed were his legs. And from that video, it was on. We began texting every couple of days, a few messages back and forth. It was an intensely polite ‘getting to know you’ period.
do you like asian food? what’s your fave coffee order? how will you spend your day off?
Then a more deliberate phase of texting:
would you come to new york ever? i can take you to the nice parks
i love love new york! maybe I should come. do you like australia?
i love australia it’s my favourite! very consistently great coffee. big angry spiders. great breakfast foods
It was fun to have a crush. He was at arm’s length, across the world, my casual ping-pong penpal. I had spent my entire career specialising in interviewing and presenting, a skill set that centred on how well you could create rapport with a stranger. My conversations with Magnus were a bit like that. Nina had given me an outline and I was filling in the colours of him, one genteel answer at a time. Then, one evening, he called. It was funny hearing each other’s voices for the first time, saying the same things as our texts. We spoke for almost three hours, with questions fired back and forth like, ‘Are your parents still together? Do you have siblings? Who are your best friends?’
He was inquisitive and un-precious, and I liked how upfront we were with each other. We texted and occasionally called one another for a few months during which time there were several hesitant statements of ‘I think it would actually be very nice to go on a date.’ Followed by, ‘Oh yes, me too. One day.’
One day came.
I was a lizard in sunglasses, soaking up every bit of Californian sunshine. My bare legs were slowly frying as I sat on a concrete bench waiting for him. I squinted into the sunlight as I spotted his figure approaching me and waving hello. I stood up and we hugged awkwardly; barely touching as he patted my back softly.
We began wandering through the large food market next door. He was in LA for work, and I was on holidays, visiting friends. We sipped on ice coffees, and the awkwardness disintegrated as we chatted. Before we knew it, our morning coffee date had turned into lunch, then an afternoon stroll, a shared watermelon juice, and then finally, in the early evening hours, instead of parting ways he suggested dinner at a nearby sushi spot. As we walked up the stairs to the restaurant, he casually took my hand and led me towards the door. Our table wasn’t ready yet so we stood outside. I looked at our reflection in the dark glass of the shop next door. He hadn’t let go of my hand, and it felt nice.
After dinner, we sat on a bench outside and I wondered how long we could stay there like that in a calm and comfortable silence. I imagined we were feeling an identical relief in each other. Melodramatic thoughts flashed in my mind. Thank fuck he isn’t psychotic or annoying in real life. Thank fuck I actually find him attractive. Thank fuck he’s no longer just my internet crush.
After our first all-day date, we spent another three days in each other’s pockets. We went for tacos and long walks, we sat side by side eating pizza and talking about our families. Nina had been right about our common interests overlapping, but it was more than that. The whole thing felt easy. No performance, no pressure. I was just present with him. I liked telling him the truth about my funny parents and my failed engagement. He always seemed to be looking at me with a mix of curiosity and kindness. After we’d eat, I’d go to the bathroom and take note of my dishevelled appearance in the mirror—loose jeans and sneakers, one of his massive t-shirts thrown on over the top, and my hair bordering on filth territory, haphazardly pulled up. I looked a little sloppy, but I was happy. And every time I walked out, he’d be standing there, waiting to slip his arm over my shoulder with ease. It was peaceful, lustful. I thought it was temporary.
When it was time to leave LA at the end of the week, Magnus sat on the floor next to my bag in the hotel room, watching me as I packed. We both agreed that it had been very nice that we had finally met, but that we didn’t need to force anything on each other outside of our time together.
‘If you lived in America, I would probably ask you to be my girlfriend,’ he said, with a casual bluntness that I was beginning to like a lot. ‘But you don’t. You live down there.’
He pointed down to the carpet between his crossed legs. ‘You live through the earth and under the ocean and then out the other side of the world.’
I nodded, looking at him with what I hoped was a perfect mixture of affection yet aloofness. It made sense not to turn this crush into anything serious—it would be the most inconvenient new boyfriend choice in the world! I was mentally prepared to be a very cool human, independent as fuck, despite feeling the urge to lean my head on his chest 24/7. I knew the sort of balance that I was after in a relationship; it was the happy medium I’d spoken about months ago with Nina. As I zipped up my suitcase, I told myself contentedly that Magnus was at least an example that that person exists. And that could be enough. The universe was saying, ‘See, dipshit! There are people out there who are exactly what you need.’
A couple of hours later, as I sat in my plane seat before we took flight, he called me.
‘I wanted you to know, I don’t think I’m going to go on any other dates,’ he stated matter-of-factly. I was elated, so I chucked my planned nonchalance in the fucking bin.
‘I’d like you to know that I won’t be doing that either.’ I couldn’t hide the smile in my voice as I settled back into my seat.
Normally I was coy about the people I was interested in. I waited months to work up the courage I needed to introduce them into my family. I always felt hesitant, like my large Italian family might find something to tease a person about, or my mum would say something she didn’t realise was insensitive (she once told an ex-boyfriend, ‘You know your ears are too small for your body,’ and he got a complex about it). But this time I couldn’t help telling my parents that I had met someone.
A few days after I arrived back in Australia, I had lunch with my dad. We had a simple spread of bread rolls, carrots and cucumbers to munch on, a fluffy omelette with parmesan and parsley, plus ripe tomatoes loaded with olive oil and huge basil leaves from his garden. I showed Dad a blurry photo of Magnus on my phone and then a clearer picture of him from social media. ‘Look h’at those nice blue h’eyes!’ he exclaimed as he leaned in to look at my phone. He seemed happy for me.
Later that week Mum met me in Chinatown for dinner. We ate wonton soup while she talked a mile a minute about her salsa dancing community. I waited for a break to tell her about Magnus. I said we’d been on a few dates and I liked him so far. She quizzed me, like she was ticking off boxes on a questionnaire.
‘Does he drink alcohol?’
‘No, Mum.’
‘Does he smoke?’
‘Never.’
‘Does he earn good money to support himself?’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘And not a playboy?’
‘No, I don’t think so, Mum. He’s Nina’s good friend.’
‘Hmm, good that one of your girlfriends really knows him. Because an overseas boyfriend is not a good idea! And if he play up overseas, that’s no good, Linda!’
‘I know, Mum.’
She was tut-tutting at me, and she had her judgemental dance concert face (which I was expecting) on. I kept slurping my soup, feeling like it had gone as smoothly as I could have hoped. She’s allowed to be concerned, I thought. And I’m allowed to follow my feelings, for once. It was empowering to be less secretive about my relationship. Even if it didn’t last for long, I wanted this new relationship to exist in the real world.
Long distance with Magnus was different from the experience I’d had with Ben all those years ago. There were no shampoo epiphanies where I realised I preferred being alone. This time, I really missed my far-flung partner. I was compelled to connect with him, eager to pour out the story of my day as I hurried out of the office, taking the stairs instead of the lift so we wouldn’t lose reception for those precious twenty seconds it would take to ride down to the lobby. God, you are being ridiculous! I scolded myself as I huffed down the stairwells.
‘Just come back,’ he said to me. ‘Just come back over your summer break, and do Christmas and NewYear’s in New York. If you want.’
He said it as flippantly as you’d say, ‘Just pass me my jacket from that chair? If you don’t mind.’ As if it wasn’t a big grand gesture to commit to spending my three-week holiday period with him (and his parents! Who I’d never met!) in a different country, when we’d only really spent a few days with each other.
‘Let me think about it.’ I stopped pounding down the echoing stairs and caught my breath. I wanted to react coolly and not rush into anything. I had spent years tumbling through relationships, following someone else’s energy and desires. But his proposal felt genuinely special, and I was ecstatic.
But I pictured the Marigliano Christmas extravaganza I would be missing out on. Handing out the fried zeppole snacks before dinner, the factory line of kitchen-bound women, the spongy panettone dipped in espresso, Nonna’s cute face as she handed out her Christmas presents—which always consisted solely of greeting cards stuffed with cash; classic Italian behaviour. Surely I should stay in Australia. The disapproving look from Nonna if I didn’t get up quickly enough to clear the pasta bowls was nothing compared to the glare I’d receive if I left the country to spend the holidays with some guy I’d just met. I was leaning against a wall in the empty stairwell, letting the guilt creep in. Magnus spoke again through the speaker.
‘No pressure. It’s whatever you want to do.’
I smiled at his calm hopefulness. It was nice being pursued, especially after I’d had to put in more of the hard work in my previous relationship with Dom. Magnus was being open about wanting to see me again. So what do you want to do, Linda? I wanted to stop analysing it and give in to the feeling that felt truthful for once. Fuck it. I didn’t need to act too cool for this.
‘Okay,’ I said slowly. ‘I’d love to.’
A couple of months after we’d met in LA, we were reunited in New York. We were being whipped by the wind as we waited to cross the street, when his mother weaved her little arm through mine. We had only met that morning, and I had already told her all about my nonna. ‘She’s one of us already, Magnus,’ his mother said as she leaned into me, arm still woven through mine. ‘She loves her family and also coffee!’ I was jet-lagged as shit, cold as shit, but still so pleased to have the approval of this important, affectionate woman. I felt further validated when Magnus’s father cracked a smile at me as we shared a doughnut.
On NewYear’s Eve, the four of us stood on the rooftop of Magnus’s apartment building to watch the fireworks across Manhattan. The sky was a dark charcoal against the distant colourful bursts, but it was the infinite streets, bustling and noisy, that I loved the most. I watched the scene contentedly, even enjoying the aggressive chill in the air.
Magnus flew to Australia three months later and was immediately thrown into meeting my family for yum cha. As the years and the divorce dust had settled, Mum and Dad were now on good terms as friends, and it was sweet to watch them interact with my new boyfriend over dim sum. Mum was telling Magnus all about the salsa party she’d been at the night before, barely letting him get a word in. Dad pulled me aside to tell me that ‘Magnus h’is very fond of you, I can tell by the way he was playing with your ’air when you walked in.’
The night before Magnus left, we were sitting among the plants in my apartment, chatting. With the knees of our crossed legs touching, we sat face to face in the darkened living room. The sun had just set, morphing from pink to amber to soot peacefully. The slowly creeping darkness seemed to hold us, suspended in a moment together, and neither of us acknowledged the fact that we should get up and put a light on, or eat dinner or pack his bag. No. We could stay like this. We wouldn’t have to fly away again. This was nice. Nobody move or the world will notice and time will start again. I was speaking about some innocuous subject and I was studying his face as he looked back into mine. He fucking loves me. I bet he fucking loves me. And with that smug thought I realised how deeply I felt about him too. He leaned over to give me a mid-conversation hug and the words ‘I love you’ spilled out of my mouth in one short breath. Almost before I had finished the ‘you’ he poured the words right back to me, but added in the word ‘really’, so it became ‘I really love you.’
As the months went on, our long-distance relationship remained in an extended honeymoon phase. There was effort and excitement. There was gratitude where otherwise we may have stepped into complacency. We fell into a sweetly predictable rhythm of talking every day. If this is the only time that we have together, then let’s make it the best, I thought. I walked around on Saturday afternoons showing him the endless ocean and the flower-filled cemetery next to it; he showed me the hole in the heel of his sock and the tiny spider he allowed to live in the bathroom. He walked by the backdrop of a purple and pink sunset that looked unreal on my tiny screen, and I showed him the ibis eating trash out the front of my place. And even though I still found it difficult to mention anything that was really making me anxious or uneasy, I showed him the realest version of me that I could muster.
But when the majority of our interactions were over texts and calls, it made it especially easy for me to start performing as the best version of myself. While I knew Magnus wasn’t fussed about how I looked when we Face-timed, I was conscious of keeping a bubbly, effervescent energy switched on whenever we spoke. It seemed like a natural instinct to keep someone interested in loving me. It wasn’t just about being able to hold in a fart or close the bathroom door if I needed to pluck a hair out of my nipple; I had the ability to keep curating the person I wanted to be seen as. It was the deeply ingrained rhythm of perfection and approval, a language for love that I had grown up learning.
But Magnus isn’t one for bullshit, and he started to pick up on subtle differences in my tone. I had thought I was the only one who could tell when I was faking a smile, but it turned out I was wrong.
‘I can hear it in your voice, why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind?’ he would gently prod.
‘Nothing.’
‘It’s not nothing. I’ll keep asking until you want to tell me.’
And eventually, after some extended coaxing, I started to let him in. The first time, I was sitting on a bench outside work, facing away from the doors to the building so people couldn’t see my teary face as they left the office. I started to tell Magnus about how I was feeling a lot of pressure at work, how I would overextend myself, how my mother had said some little thing that made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. He dubbed the spot I was sitting the ‘crying bench’. I was like a sad egg yolk oozing feelings all over that bench, more vulnerable than I’d ever been. We were so far away, but our conversation was so intimate.
‘Everything can wait. Everything and everyone. Even your mum. You’ve gotta take little bits of time in between things.’
I mmm-hmmed softly. He continued in a point-blank tone that was slightly scolding, with the slightest pinch of warmth to remind me that he loved me.
‘And you need to get better at knowing when to say no.’
It was the same shit I’d been told before. But I liked the words ‘Everything can wait’.
My current state on the bench, oozing dissatisfaction, was not going to cut it so I started to change things. Little things with those words in mind. I made sure I ate lunch every day, and began to walk outside into the sunshine and decompress after being on air, even if it was just for a minute, before continuing with the rest of my day. I wasn’t necessarily saying ‘no’ to people, but I was learning to say ‘wait a minute, I’m just finishing up’ if I needed a moment to sit still. Especially if I noticed myself rushing, mirroring the way my mother would buzz around like a petite tornado. I was forcing balance on myself in the simplest of ways. I felt calmer than I had in years.
And my jaw! After a while, it barely ached at all. I still did my exercises, and the click was loud whenever I stretched my jaw wide, but I didn’t mind. It was my sonic tattoo—an audible reminder of how bad my anxiety had been. There were exceptions when I still overcommitted and pushed, but those days were rarer. And when they came, I could handle the madness, perhaps even thrive in it for a little bit. Because the madness was a novelty, not my default anymore. I could remain the good girl who still showed up consistently, but I was no longer running on empty.
‘It isn’t a real relationship.’
My friend Cat had her hands upturned as she made that frank remark, shaking her head. We were sitting upstairs in a Thai cafe, finishing up the last of our curries and rice. I didn’t know what to say. I looked down, using a chunk of broccoli as a little mop for the last of the curry on my plate. Little mop for a little slop, I thought to myself, not wanting to think too hard about what one of my closest friends had just said. But her comment had cut me a little, like a shank in my heart, and I couldn’t shake the feeling I was doing my relationship wrong.
My phone had been buzzing throughout our lunch—Magnus had called but I hadn’t answered. I’d seen Cat glancing at my phone with a slight look of disdain and the faint glimmer of an eye roll when she saw his name pop up in my notifications. It was the first time I realised how our relationship must have looked from the outside, and it made me doubt my own feelings. The big mirror was up above me, and I couldn’t blame Cat for her perspective. To her, my new boyfriend was just a name in my phone, a flashing light that interrupted our conversations, a hologram that I described favourably from memory. He was the reason I wouldn’t date anyone else, despite potential, more convenient dudes in the city I was in. I understood that it didn’t seem like a smart choice to start seeing someone who you couldn’t see very often. I chewed slowly, then tried to respond as truthfully as possible.
‘I get it. But right now, it feels … good. We’ve made a promise that if it gets too hard or sad, we’ll be honest, and we’ve agreed it’s okay to step away. We can keep going as long as we’re making each other’s lives better. I know it sounds weird but he’s really direct, and I think it’s making me more honest too. He’s kind of like you actually.’
Cat looked at me discerningly, but she didn’t say anything.
We moved on to talking about her uni degree and how we were both planning to get coconut soft serves as dessert. I was grateful to put a lid on the conversation. It was hard for me to explain my relationship without feeling foolish, like I’d made the wrong choice in a boyfriend and I was disappointing my clever friends. I wished I could just show them what we were like together.
Magnus and I had been dating for several months by this point, and I had begun to feel the public scrutiny from my most assertive and pragmatic friends. First it was Cat, and then I saw the same glimmer of an eye roll as I grabbed a coffee with Miska. Magnus had called and this time I had answered to tell him I’d call back later.
‘Go away, we’re hanging out,’ Miska had teased laughingly.
When I hung up, she remarked, ‘Video calls are so annoying, I’d rather just text if I need something, or see someone in person.’
‘But it’s all Magnus and I have!’ I wanted to shout. ‘We don’t have a choice to just hang out like normal people. If we did, believe me, we fucking would!’
After Miska and I had parted ways, I tried calling him back but it was late in New York and I had missed our precious window of time. That was the most frustrating thing about long distance: these missed moments. If we missed our window, then the next one generally wouldn’t come around until the following day. The next day he was working until late, so I wouldn’t be able to speak to him until right before he went to sleep, at which point I’d be out with friends after work. It was annoying tossing up whether to be a girlfriend who misses her boyfriend’s calls or to be the friend who answers their phone while out. Both seemed shitty to me.
I wanted my worlds to collide. For my closest friends to like Magnus, to support our choice to be together despite the difficulties of long distance. To be happy for me. But instead, I felt isolated. Separate from him physically and separate from some of my dearest friends emotionally.
The calls had become more important—making the time zones work proved that our relationship was a priority. Lately I had been the one to rarely miss calls, and I had been proactive about when we could speak. I was more organised than Magnus in that way, and it made me insecure that he always seemed so laidback and self-assured about what we had. No wonder my friends were eye-rolling.
On the train ride home from seeing Miska, I thought about the pattern of our relationship. It was like a verse and chorus structure of a song. A smooth verse, a couple of months of waiting, and then a chorus—a week of ecstasy together—and then back to a verse again, leading up to another chorus. There was no semblance of what a real life together would feel like, or how this would ever end. When I boiled it down like that, I felt icky. I tried to numb myself by listening to a Playboi Carti track on repeat and turning the volume up too loud in my headphones. But I couldn’t help spiralling. Was I one of those girls wasting my last fertile years waiting on a dude who wasn’t worth it? If my friends don’t respect this relationship, is it bullshit?
The taxi driver chatted to me as I frantically applied deodorant, watching as the billboards took up the sky. A Netflix show. A Kardashian underwear range. A compensation lawyer. We were just a few blocks away from Magnus’s house. He had recently moved to LA, so it was easier for us to see each other now, just one glorious flight between him and me. Nothing compared to the rush of excitement pulsing along my skin as my taxi pulled up to the house. He’d be watching from the window before running out to the front gate, leading me inside the house and throwing my luggage to the side. We would spend the entire day in a cloud of contentment. And nothing compared to the ocean of calm we both felt the following morning when we woke up, side by side, as if I’d been there for years, not hours.
This time I would be spending a week with him in California, a precious handful of jet-lagged days that we squeezed between work commitments. We had been counting down to my arrival for the last couple of months. There was always a countdown. Whether it was counting down to when we’d reunite, or until we’d be apart again, our time together was a cauldron of mixed emotions because of how finite it was.
I tried not to be too conscious of the countdown. I did my best to stay in the moment as I had when we’d first met, but I couldn’t help being acutely aware of how long we had left each time, like there was a huge clock above his face counting down the nights, the hours. The ticking time made it feel ominous and precious; as if someone had said to us, ‘Here’s your best friend, the world is ending for you in two days. Go, motherfucker!’
Each day and night were a stretch of time that emulated what our life would be like if we were together always; an exceptional date night, a social day with friends, quiet time at home, work during the day and a quick dinner at night, sorting out the recycling, talking about children. We’d decided that eventually I would move from Sydney to LA, but we didn’t have a date locked in. I had to fulfil my work contract which would be lasting for almost another year, and Magnus was understanding about not rushing me before I was ready. We both hoped that the verse and chorus pattern of our song might be over at some point, but I found myself thinking about the icky feeling I’d had back in Australia, wondering if what we had was indeed real. I pushed the feeling away. Make the time count, Linda.
I woke up on Sunday morning in our home. He called it ‘our’ home, but the cynical part of me wondered how it could be partly mine if I was still only there a week or two every few months. We had a full Sunday together before I flew back to Sydney the following night. I sat in bed looking out the window; watching a squirrel scramble along the powerline outside. I heard Magnus grinding coffee beans downstairs. We drank our coffees and I grabbed our big tote bags to head to the farmers’ markets close by. We took our time picking long-stemmed beetroot and carrots, leafy greens and plump berries, as well as a bag of dried persimmons. We were craving hummus and pita chips so we bought those too. The pita chips were fried to addictive oblivion; crunchy and moreish. When we got home, we unpacked the fruit into the big blue fruit bowl on the counter, and loaded the vegetables into the fridge crisper drawer. These greens will be here longer than I am, I thought to myself. I chose these dumb little cucumbers and I won’t be snacking on them because I’m just pretending to live here, pretending to be a normal couple getting groceries for the week together.
Later that night we sat side by side at a sushi restaurant, the same one we had been to on our first date. I had been walking around with the weird sadness in my pocket all day, but I couldn’t put my finger on how to bring it up.
‘What’s on your mind?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Nothing.’
‘Just say it. It’s something.’
I was silent for several seconds. The little pink plate in front of me had housed a perfect morsel of sushi a minute ago, and now there was just a small smear of soy sauce left behind. I wanted to dive into that splotch of soy and never come out. I didn’t even know what it was that I needed to say. I didn’t want to fuck things up. But then I remembered it was Magnus I was talking to. If I couldn’t be honest now, what was the point? Maybe I could let the sadness out, just a little.
‘The weight of the world, huh,’ he said gently, waiting for me to speak.
I breathed out audibly, pulling myself out of my soy sauce puddle fantasy. ‘I think I’m (long pause) having a hard time believing this is real. And maybe I also need (another fearful pause) a bit more balance.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We say such nice things to each other, and we clearly put in heaps of effort to make this work. But sometimes, I find it hard to see when this part will end, and this will become a real relationship.’
‘It doesn’t feel real to you? All our conversations each day, and this in person, doesn’t it feel real to you?’
I looked at his face and felt foolish. Of course it was real. I had been so caught up in the minor negatives, that I had questioned everything. It would take a bit more time, but it was real and it was okay. He had placed his hand on mine.
‘It is. I know it is.’
Magnus nodded. ‘Is there something else you’re concerned about?’
I thought about the sadness in my pocket. Was there something else to say? Maybe the thing I was too scared to even think about needed to be said.
‘It’s hard not to feel like I’m living in limbo until I move over here. And I think a part of that is feeling sometimes like it’s not equal between us.’
‘What does that mean?’
I’d gone too far. Fuck. I wanted the sushi chef in front of me to slice my face open with his knife and sashimi my cheeks before I could go any further. But there was no going back now. I looked down, towards the counter.
‘It’s not ever when we’re together. It’s when we’re apart, like when we’re figuring out when to talk or when we’ll see each other next.’ I picked up my chopsticks, and held one upright in each hand. Maybe because it illustrated my point, or maybe because I didn’t want to look straight at him. I pointed one straight up to the ceiling and leaned the other one in at an angle. I gestured to the straight one. ‘This one feels like you sometimes, and then this one leaning in feels like me. But I need us both to lean in. Especially if I’m eventually going to move here.’
‘You don’t think I put in enough effort?’
‘I just need it to feel balanced.’
‘I didn’t know you felt that way.’
‘It’s not bad, I just know that I’m very good at being accommodating and acting like everything’s fine.’
Magnus looked mortified. I had upset him horribly. But we kept talking. We talked about planning for the future, locking in dates to help me plan out my work calendar. I told him that sometimes it felt like I would always make time to speak to him, even if I was busy, but I didn’t feel like that swung both ways. It was important to me that I avoided another scenario of me bending to please someone else, and compromising too far. I knew deep down he’d never pressured me in that way, but I was compelled to say it out loud.
He was sad that I had been upset and not said anything, and I was sad that he was sad, and we were both so fucking sad for a few minutes that I almost cried while ordering an ice cream on the way home. ‘You always want dessert, go on.’ He touched my shoulder gently and I ordered a double scoop that I seasoned with a tear or two while walking home. We clung to each other until the following night when I stoically stepped into a cab back to the airport, the boot slamming shut and punctuating the end of our little physical world together. I reminded myself that our world wasn’t falling apart, it was growing.
From that conversation on, things shifted. He was more proactive in planning ahead for when we’d see each other. He’d also text to ask if I was free before he rang, so I didn’t have to drop everything to answer my phone in the middle of a task. Of course the sporadic calls still punched through; how else would I see the hilarious dog he was standing with or the guy playing keys outside the convenience store? But our quality time was guaranteed. I figured Magnus probably thought I was anal and insecure, wanting to be organised in that way, but it was nice that he did it anyway.
Yes, we had an unruly ocean of physical distance between us, but we were closing the gap on any emotional distance. Ironically, despite the extreme effort it was taking for us to see each other across the globe or coordinate our breaks in the day to call each other, our connection was easy and effortless. It didn’t feel like an act—it felt loving and true, like we were setting ourselves up for something that would last.
‘I wish you weren’t worth the wait. But you are.’
Magnus said this as he was walking around the block to get his step count up one night in LA. It was a sad but flattering statement. I was lying on my back on a yoga mat in a thick slice of afternoon sun. My phone was on loudspeaker, resting on my belly.
‘I feel the same,’ I replied.
We were in the thick of it. A time where the world had shut down. It couldn’t have come at a weirder moment for us. I had finally quit my full-time radio job and moved everything to LA, just like we had planned. We were ecstatic about spending the next few years of our lives living and working there together. My dad had sent me off with a pair of his long-stemmed hairdressing scissors in a special case as a gift, so I could trim my own fringe. I had hugged Mum goodbye in her driveway, and she had said tearfully, muffled into my shoulder, ‘Who’s going to nag at you now?’
Our long-distance journey was over, and at long last the ticking clock was fading away. We had lived our new life for a couple of months, finally buying homewares together, and I had flown back to Sydney for a quick work trip, a visa confirmation and a couple of weeks hanging with family. It was nice to pop back to Australia, but I was excited to get back to the life Magnus and I were setting up together.
Less than a week after dropping my suitcase on my father’s doorstep, my world was shattered and shut down. I was walking along the beach near Dad’s house when I realised the truth of what was unfolding. Thanks to the pandemic, two of my crucial work contracts had fallen through, which meant that there was no way I would get my US work visa. And Magnus, like every other foreigner, couldn’t enter Australia. We were, without a doubt, absolutely fucked.
At first, there was confusion and bewilderment. ‘What’s going on? Are our loved ones going to be okay? How do we stay safe?’ Then there was the adjustment to a new reality and sadness: ‘Okay, we just need to keep calm and stay healthy, and we need to be patient. This will be over soon.’ We forged new habits and pathways to get fulfilment out of our days. I found exercise, and listened to every genre of podcast, and Magnus and I tumbled into a mundane magnificence, propping each other up on the hard days.
‘It’s so good that you laid the long-distance groundwork for this!’ a few people said to me.
‘Shut the fuck up!’ I wanted to yell. ‘You can’t spin this positively right now!’ Instead I replied, ‘I know, right. Our communication skills are sick.’
But it was true. We had built a strong foundation that we could now rely on, despite the general heartache. Our relationship was tender and committed. We could lean on each other even though I was back ‘through the earth, under the ocean and out the other side of the world’.
I swung between feeling hopeful and hopeless. As the months stretched on with no end in sight, I wondered, Why am I doing this? I wanted to be busy again rather than being in the quiet of my own thoughts for fifteen hours a day. I wanted to be jumping from one record to the next, with a big plastered-on smile, instead of acting fine in front of my dad and trying not to lash out at my mum. I had a simmering resentment, which I did my best not to aim at anyone in particular.
When work and our social lives started opening up a little in Australia, I ran into acquaintances and friends who all wanted to know about the ‘dreadful situation my relationship was in’. People exclaimed how disappointed I must have been to choose the ‘worst timing’ to quit my job and move overseas, because now I was stuck. I was grateful to be working again, with a couple of new podcasts and projects underway, but it meant that I was constantly fielding questions about the extreme highs and lows of navigating long distance, and how on earth I was coping with none of the highs.
‘You know what I mean, Linda, you’re not getting the fun of flying across the world, the magical reunion sex!’
And I would explain, very succinctly, that yes, Magnus and I had been reduced to the most monotonous versions of our lives, and yes, it was very difficult, but we knew it would be worth it. Before long, I had it down to several rehearsed lines.
I would receive one of three reactions—pity, horror or the tip-toe. Sometimes a mix of all three. Pity was when the person’s face would sag into a look of extreme sympathy, before they proceeded to offer clumsy and softly spoken commiserations to me, like I was pining after a dead goat. ‘So sorry, you must be having such a hard time without him, and the lockdown just keeps getting longer.’
Horror was the most theatrical of the reactions—a blast of shock as the person imagined themselves in the situation. The first time I’d been able to host a TV show since the pandemic began, I was feeling good until I had to give my colleague my long-distance script and he cried out, ‘I would want to DIE if that happened! That sounds like a nightmare! You were probably planning to have a baby soon and just everything! Shit!’ In front of the camera-people and the crew, he pulled a ghastly face like I had grown horns from my temples. I didn’t know what to say so I just laughed and then got so red-faced that I had to scurry back to my dressing room for a breather.
Finally, there was the tip-toe reaction. Sometimes people were so aware of my loss that they would edit themselves while they were speaking to me. It could be as big an announcement as ‘I’m pregnant!’, or something small like ‘We had the nicest little date over the weekend’, but it would always be followed by a sweetly subtle ‘Oh no, is it okay to mention this or is it hard for you to hear?’
I figured the tip-toe was the most considerate of the reactions but it wasn’t a nice feeling knowing that people were censoring their news around me for fear of setting off some sort of heartbreaking reaction. Did I seem that unstable? I thought I was pretty good at covering up my general woes, but on certain days the smallest thing could remind me of what I didn’t have.
Despite everything, Magnus and I were feeling more aligned than ever. He confided in me when he was feeling alone—it had been over a year since he had hugged his parents. I confided in him on the occasions that I was irrationally upset, like noticing how a couple held hands at the traffic lights or seeing the way Em and her boyfriend sweetly manoeuvred around each other as they stacked the dishwasher. Sometimes the things I told Magnus were so banal that he laughed at me. I liked that. Our openness made me care more about us. It helped me not pull away, and gave me another day of patience. In that sea of uncertainty, we clung to the certainty of each other. If we could just keep holding on then maybe the life we wanted would still be waiting for us.
The bonus of being in Australia for longer than expected was that I had extra time with Nonna. She was in her late nineties now, living in a nursing home, which she had mixed feelings about. She wanted to peel beans in her garden and to unhook the back door so I could pop by for a visit without ringing the front bell. Seeing her gave my sourest days an undeniable sweetness, even though our conversations mostly wound up in circles, with me vying for her approval.
‘When you getting married to this a boy?’ Nonna rarely said Magnus’s name—it was hard for her to pronounce, and ended up sounding like ‘Mahn-yoos’, rolling over the ‘gn’ like in ‘lasagna.’
‘Ah, soon, Nonna. I’m sure we will be married soon.’
‘What about a baby? You waiting, you waiting, and when you want baby, then the baby no come …’
She’d shake her head at me, with the disapproving pursed-lip look of judgement. I’d change the subject and smile, holding her hand in mine and doing my best to laugh off her overly dramatic scowl. I did feel guilty though, because by the time I ever got around to having a family, she might not be alive to see it. I had prioritised things she didn’t understand or approve of.
Back at home, Dad would be making me dinner and, as appreciative as I was to have a hot, cosy meal laid out for me, I was like Nonna and wanted a bit of my own autonomy back. Mum was finding more reasons to pop by the house as well, and during those visits I found our dynamic increasingly stifling. Magnus may have been too alone in our home in LA, but I had begun to feel claustrophobic in my teenage bedroom. In the evenings after dinner, I’d pop out for a walk around the quiet suburban streets. Magnus would already be asleep, so often Nina would call to check in. As the original matchmaker, she was always encouraging me, reminding me that Magnus and I would get through this, we just had to keep waiting.