A limited time to say, I love you by Georgia Pine
Illustration by Lois Smith.
Units of Measurement
Before I experienced distance, I didn’t appreciate how many elements influence a journey. Whether you walk to the shop or fly across the world, you plan. You consider your destination and the time it will take to get there. If you’re running late, you plan to walk or drive faster.
My family have always been travellers. My childhood was full of stories of my mother visiting tribes and my father discovering pyramids. At nineteen I took my first solo endeavour. Three months of surfing and teaching in Morocco seemed like a bizarre prospect for someone who’d never been abroad alone. And it didn’t start well.
*
I lay on my back, arms by my side, legs out straight. Slowly, I opened my eyes and hiccupped. I noticed a crack running from the edge of the room and reaching out about a foot toward the centre of the ceiling. I moved my tongue around my mouth and gently pulled apart cracked, dry lips. I desperately wanted the bottle of water on the floor to the left of the sofa – all I would have to do was drop my arm down and grab it. But I knew if I moved, I’d throw up again. I wanted to take a deep breath, but knew the ensuing movement of my stomach would see me running for the bathroom. It was day ten of feeling like this.
Having been in Morocco just four days, I spent the night running from bedroom to bathroom. I passed both my housemates numerous times and heard the neighbours making the same journey. It was called Moroccan belly – our Western immune systems simply weren’t strong enough to cope with the North African way of life. Surfing in the sea all day every day, unintentionally swallowing the salt water, working our bodies harder than usual, alongside different levels of sanitation, had taken its toll. It was the price paid for getting to stay and surf here. Everyone seemed to recover after two or three days, but I didn’t. Sleep deprived and dehydrated I kept trying to surf, frequently throwing up in the sea and running for the beach café bathroom. After about four days I moved out to the living room so that my bathroom dashes stopped waking my room-mate.
That morning everyone had already left to go surfing. The living room was the biggest room in our flat. The sofa, ran the length of the three walls, the longest and shortest of which were lined with large windows. The heat that eventually penetrated even the curtains was what made me move. Now desperate for water I slowly sat up. The room spun and I put my head between my knees. Slowly I drank the water, then moved to the shaded side of the room. I was too hot. I lay on the cold tiles, with my cheek pressing into the floor. Little bits of sand stuck to my face.
At home I am rarely ill. The friends I’d made in the short time I’d been in Morocco seemed to think I was simply taking a long time to recover from Moroccan belly and that I’d be fine soon. But I knew something was wrong. I’d looked in the mirror and seen sunken eyes, a much thinner frame, and I was pale despite having been in Africa for the past few weeks.
The Wi-Fi in the building only reached the landing outside our door. I wrapped myself in a blanket, took a sofa cushion and sat on the floor in the dark. I felt ridiculous — at nineteen I thought I should be a proper grown-up — but I was finally giving in and calling home. For the first time in my adult life, I properly missed my Mum.
After days of me crying down the phone, she appeared. I spotted her from my third-floor window as she got out of a taxi on the dusty road. Mum cried when she saw me – after much internet searching and a visit to the pharmacy, I found out I had a stomach infection. Without my Mum I could have been much sicker for a lot longer and would have had to fly home. Instead, I stayed a total of three months in Morocco and have visited numerous times since. It is perhaps my favourite place in the world. Despite the physical distance between us, my Mum made this experience possible. Until then I’d taken her for granted. No one else would travel 1,638 miles for me. She is my best friend.
*
Elements of travel include direction, distance, time and speed.[1] In a physics class, these can be calculated and understood but, in reality, these plans don’t always work. Getting sick wasn’t part of my plan, flying to North Africa wasn’t part of my mother’s plan and sometimes in life we get lost.
Consider a relationship, whether to your family, a friend, or a partner. Label this A.
Maybe you cover the distance
between A and Z
or you move quickly from AtoLtoHtoXtoQtoWtoKtoB.
or maybe,
You go from A
To somewhere else
For work
For school
For adventure
And you travel back
To A.
Distance, time, and displacement: the earth, wind and fire of long-distance relationships.
Almost four years have passed since I was in Morocco. Since then I’ve had many friends move to all corners of the world, moved out of my family home, and experienced a failed long-distance relationship with an ex-boyfriend. The following series is an exploration of the dynamics of different kinds of long-distance relationships, from romantic to family, to successful and not.
[1] Rutherford School Physics Project, Mastering Essential GCSE Physics: Isaac Physics Skills, (Cambridge: Periphyseos Press, 2017), p.20-29.
by Georgia Pine
About A limited time to say, I love you
This is a four-part exploration of love, long distance relationships and the effects they have on us. It forms part of 2nd year English and Creative Writing student Georgia Pine’s work for the Creative Non-Fiction module and it includes illustrations by Lois Smith. Installments will be published monthly across the summer. This is the first one.