Defying COVID: An unlikely long distance story

Hi!

My name is Alexandra and I live by myself in the UK where I started working from home in March after coming back from a trip to Italy to see my mom for 4 days. Ah, the beginnings of Covid, pandemic, work from home and the madness that was 2020... feels like such a looong time ago, doesn't it?

Well, as it happens, I was home, bored and anxiety about life was building up. On the same day I came back I joined an online app to practise languages in the hope I can meet some people and see how everyone was living in this changing world. Time passed, I finally figured how the app worked but didn't really have much luck at finding good conversations.

Just a bit of background info about me: I have been learning Korean for 11 years, never seriously, you know how it is.. Always too busy, always postponing, learning a bit here and there and hope that one day it will eventually transform into a real skill! Procrastinating friends, where are you? I need you, come on, show support!!

Anyway, life was going on, I slowly started to really dislike my work around that time and one day I post a picture on this app, a photo of my cat as many others were doing. Few hours later I get a reply from a guy who corrected the short Korean sentence I managed to get wrong and oh my, never felt prouder of myself for getting something wrong in my life!

I looked at this guy's picture and profile and decided to message back. Turns out we never missed a day of talking since then. After starting talking on the 9th of April, we confessed our feelings for each other on the 7th of June. I'll leave the beautiful details of our long conversations for another post.

To be honest, I didn't really think we could meet. I mean think about it, there is a pandemic in progress, he is a student that just finished army and has no money, travel advices were constantly changing, South Korea required me to pay a large sum of money to self isolate if I wanted to get in, work was not great and we had no idea what was going to happen to his studies. To sum it up, everything was a nice big chaos and whatever plans we made changed quite literally every single day.

He was going through a very hard time at the moment and a relationship in these circumstances was not really feasible. What if we waited so long and then when we met in real life we turned out to be so much more different than what we expected? Well... we started to plan that if he can do online lessons, instead of him staying in Korea with his grandparents and not working, he could come to stay with me in the UK. I mean, I already pay rent here so the process should be easy and straight forward, right?

Ha! You would think.. However complications were far from the end, in fact, they were just about to start. I mean two people trying to defy the world, the financial aspect and just be together, suddenly living together long term in the same place when they didn't even meet once and be happy like a beautiful romantic movie, I mean what could possibly go wrong?

First thing, my landlady told me she doesn't accept double occupancy in the room so that's when sky started collapsing on top of us and smashing us little by little. I started looking for a new place to stay, doing viewings online and in person, keeping him updated and then when we did decide on a place I had 1 month to get the tickets for him sorted, figure out how to drive, buy a car for groceries and moving and pack everything. Needless to say my flatmates didn't make life easy either.

All in all, I do all of the above in addition to my work that was getting busier and busier. On the day of the flight, it was night for me, early morning for him. Now pause for a second and have a guess. What do you think happened next? If you guess correct you get a candy, will figure a way to deliver it to you somehow.

(pause for thinking and intense dramatic music plays from nowhere like the drum sounds in Jumanji cause why not)

Yep, yep, well done you! Flight was cancelled. Suddenly my world collapsed again. I have to call him, he's going to panic, is this my fault? What do we do?!

Very, and I mean VERY surprisingly we had some really good teamwork that night. Called the airline customer support twice, talked to the airport, talked to each other, if we get a refund we need to book a new flight, if we get a replacement flight then there is a change of flight in some random place and maybe he gets COVID. After a stressful 4 hours he was finally on the flight and we met the day after.

I went to pick him up at the airport, gosh, saying I was excited is an understatement. I was TERRIFIED. I felt literally sick, I went to the airport with this little bottle of lemon juice in my bag and hoped my heart would not explode at any point. And it didn't. I saw him coming out, wearing an orange hoodie, looking cute and the rest is for another story.

If you are in a long distance relationship please do not give up. These things are not for everyone and many times they do not work but when you put your head onto something especially if you are as stubborn as we were, nothing can ever stop you.

Thank you so much for reading this story and I would love if you could let me know what you think and maybe share it around?

See you next time!