A Birthday To Remember

As I am writing this, Davy is on his way back to The Netherlands. We have just had our eighth visit, but the first time we’ve ever been able to share my birthday as a physical couple. I’m so blessed to be able to say that I have had the opportunity to spend my birthday with such an amazing man and human being.

I’m guessing you are wondering all about it hmm? So why don’t I tell you?

Well, it started off a tiny bit dramatic. Davy’s journey for the most part had gone smooth. I expected it to be a little bit turbulent with the times, because as you all probably know about the problems at Calais and Dover with migrants. Surprisingly enough, getting through border control etc went perfectly smooth. It was the last leg of the journey to me that was the frustrating part. Because his coach came in just a few minutes later than expected, Davy had to make a dash to the train station to catch his train to my town. This meant by the time he got to the station, the train he usually gets had just left the platform. Literally. So by the time he arrived in St Austell, it was 5.30pm, instead of 4.10pm - but the most important thing of all was being able to finally hold each other again!

When we got indoors, the usual post picking Davy up from the station routine began! We gave each other as many kisses and cuddles that we could fit in before he went into the shower to freshen up after travelling for nearly 24hrs straight. Then we had pie and mash (with liquor - not alcoholic…it’s a typical British thing, also known as green gravy or as I like to call it bogey gravy because it looks like bogeys haha) for dinner before curling up in each other’s arms for the rest of the evening. We headed to bed slightly earlier than usual as Davy was knackered and we had a 8-9wk old Bengal kitten to pick up in Devon the next day!


So it’s Friday the 21st of August and we got up early to go through Dartmoor to get our new male Bengal kitten called Zorro. Unfortunately for us, the weather was dreadful so when we drove through Dartmoor itself it was incredibly foggy. I had been hoping the weather would be nice (considering it’s meant to be August) when we drove through it, as it’s one of the most beautiful national parks we have here in England. There was quite a lot of traffic but we managed to get there early! When we arrived and Zorro was put into our arms, I’ve never seen Davy melt so fast. His eyes light up like the moon haha. Davy really took to Zorro and vice versa. At some point during our visit, the kitten got more snuggles than me. Talk about being a third wheel during my birthday much? Just kidding ;) (actually serious)

A few days pass, and it’s now Monday. We woke up to some bad news, my twin sister had collapsed in my parents room around 7am. She had a pain in the right side of her stomach that was causing her to feel really unwell. My parents had to call an ambulance and she had to be taken to hospital. She kept throwing up and stuff, which was really scary. I’ll admit, when I got told an ambulance had to be called I cried my eyes out in bed with Davy hugging my sides and telling me that Lily would be okay. Because both my parents went to the hospital with my twin sister, me, Davy and my other sister done the housework and made sure that my parents wouldn’t come back to a sink full of dirty dishes and whatnot. Thankfully a few hours, a blood test and an anti-sickness tablet later Lily was allowed to come home. It wasn’t exactly something you would expect to happen a day before our 23rd birthday. She’s now feeling much better, but is avoiding dairy products as they keep affecting her.

Midnight on the 25th August! I am now officially 23 and old. Okay, not thaaaaat old. But getting there slowly (as Davy would put it). Me and Lily opened our cards and presents shortly after midnight. For some reason, some of my cards hadn’t arrived yet but most of Lily’s did. But it’s okay, because it’s not what you get for your birthday - it’s how and who you spend it with. Not to say I didn’t get any presents, I did. My parents bought me two Arsenal shirts - the third kit from the 2014/2015 season and the new home kit for this season (2015/2016). Whilst Davy had bought me three books (A Discovery Of Witches and Shadow Of Night by Deborah Harkness as well as Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard) as well as a notebook with a horse in watercolour on the front. I’ll try to get a picture of the things I got for my birthday and post them on instagram some time, as I forgot to do it on the day. Overall, it was a perfect birthday spent with the love of my life especially as it was filled with so many hugs, kisses and tickles! Usually I complain about him tickling me because I’m like neeeh stop it because I can’t handle being tickled but this time we tickled each other the equal amount so I didn’t mind too much.

The rest of the visit was pretty quiet leading up to the end of it. Davy had brought over some more hagelslag (roughly 1.5kg of it), boemboe (for my parents who are addicted) and some stroopwafel cake mix! So on Wednesday evening, we had a go at making stroopwafel cake! We didn’t have fully sized stroopwafels so we used mini ones instead! It still tasted amazing though. We were pretty amazed at how high it had risen and how soft the stroopwafels were inside the actual cake! Seriously, if you ever get a chance to make stroopwafel cake. . . DO IT! As well as trying some baking, we took ourselves off to the cinema on Thursday evening to watch The Bad Education movie. It’s hilariously good, and it’s probably British comedy at its finest in our opinion at least.

And then he had to leave on the 29th, the suckiest and most depressing part of a visit . .  *sighs*

At this moment, I’m feeling very numb and lost as you do post-visit. The post-visit blues depend on the couple, I find. Some say leaving each other gets easier and some say it gets harder each time. I think we’re in the latter category. We always tend to find the first few weeks, maybe even month apart the hardest.

Getting used to doing things without each other, the small things mainly, is tricky. Usually after we’ve dropped Davy off in Plymouth around 11.35pm, my dad and I make our way back to St Austell. Then we get indoors around quarter to one in the morning. After taking my coat and shoes off, I start getting ready for bed. There’s not much you can do so late at night when your other half is already 40 miles away from you and he isn’t even on the coach yet until 1am. I grab my night time drink, head upstairs to get into my pjs and to make a one minute forty-five voice note on Whatsapp to wish Davy goodnight so he can hear my voice before he dozes off on his journey, brush my teeth and settle into my single bed. Alone *sobs*. Several times during the night, I wake up and reach for Davy only to find there is a wall on the left of me instead of him sleeping like a baby.


Both of us are trying not to dwell on being apart too much, but it’s extremely hard not to after a visit. You try your hardest to adjust to the old ‘normal’ (lame and alone) routine that you had before the visit, but it’s much easier said than done. But I think being able to have a Whatsapp call or a Skype call - even for a few minutes - whilst he is on his coach helps us cope with it much better as hard as it is to be apart again. We’ve already got some plans to help distract us (some of which you’ll find in our monthly three for September). We’re not sure when our next visit will be, we’re hoping for October as it’s our 4th anniversary and we didn’t get to spend it together last year. If not for a few days in October for our anniversary, then we’ll definitely be spending Christmas together. But for now, we have to get back to being patient, staying motivated and getting plans from the ‘we could do this’ phase to the ‘okay that’s ticked off the list’ phase instead.

I can’t wait to hold and kiss him once again. Whether it’s on another visit, or when we close the distance. I know every moment spent with Davy is going to be more than perfect.

Inspired by this LDR Writing Prompt: Visits