Miles Apart, Hearts Together

When I heard about the two astronauts who just returned home from space after 9 months, the first thing that came to mind was how? We all know it’s impossible to survive in space for that long unplanned, but I found out they even lived better than some of us on earth. Lol

Anyway, we’re already in March, and I think I’ve traveled eight times already. I love traveling, and I get happy when I have to leave home, especially for long periods. It wasn’t like that in the beginning, though. I remember how I used to cry anytime I was leaving the house knowing my mom was going to be alone for a long time. But now it’s different.

If I’m being honest, I am not exactly a fan of always communicating with my loved ones through phone calls when I travel. And sometimes, depending on the reason why I’m traveling, you might even call me, and I won’t be reachable. So I just try my best to leave them texts about how my day went, what happened to me, and why it did. And then ask them to do the same.

But when I know I’m going to be away for a very long period of time, I like to send a lot of pictures to those close to me. I think that’s the main way I communicate with them. I spam their DMs with pictures of me, what I’m doing, what I saw, ate, and everything. If we’re extremely close, you might even get videos of my expressions to things or videos of me talking about things I normally would have texted.

I remember one time I traveled for about 6 months, and by the time I returned home, my mom was complaining of her storage being full because of the number of pictures and videos I was sending her. That was the longest I had been away from home. I believe that if I’m not going to talk to her all the time, then I might as well just show her what’s going on.

When I returned home, I hugged her for about a minute, rested, and asked her to come with me to the beach so we could spend time together talking about the trip while enjoying the waves. After coming home from the beach that night, we had a whole girls night still talking about so many things that happened on my trip.

With all of these, it’s obvious that there is an exception when it comes to my mom. Although I’m not a fan of phone calls when I travel, I sometimes end up being on the phone with my mom for hours without even realizing it.