Hey guys (:

Before I get to the other stuff I promised in my last posts, I’d like to tell you about someone, and he’s a HUGE part of my life.

Before we dive in, I’m going to set the mood with this song, go ahead and click it, it’ll open in a new tab, and you can listen to it while you read this.

As you have probably guessed from the song, this is going to be about my significant other, Private First Class Kayden Ellwood Caballero.

He currently serves the Army of the United States of America. Gosh, I can’t tell you how much I’m feeling as I write these words. I miss him, so much. But I’m plowing through and going through with this. You’ll never going to know the real me otherwise.

So yes, Kayden is a soldier. He’s enlisted in Fort Drum, NY, in the 10th Mountain Division. Specifically, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment. Surprised I remember that ? I don’t *laughs* I have it written down on my makeup vanity, so I won’t ever forget.  A quick bio : He was born December 8th, 1995 in Sheffield, England to a England born Mexican father (hence the English citizenship) and an American born mother (hence the American citizenship that allowed him to enlist in the US Army). He moved to New York at 15, enrolled in high school, then joined the army afterwards.

Kayden and I met through a mutual friend. My Indonesian born friend, let’s call her Birdie, moved to the States a few years back, and ended up in the same high school as Kayden. Birdie then came home to Indonesia in late 2013, and we spent some time together. When she went back to the States, she somehow set me up with Kayden.

Now keep in mind that back then, Kayden already knew he wanted to enlist in the Army, and so with that decision, he’s leaving all his social life behind to focus on serving his country. (Yes, he’s old school like that)

Fun fact #1, his surname Caballero means ‘gentleman’ in Spanish.

Anyway, he *claims* he doesn’t know what drove him to contact me. He *claims* that he was attracted to me since Birdie first told him and their group of friends about her adventures back in Indonesia, and some of those stories mentioned me, I guess.

So this is what he did ↓

That was the very first thing he ever sent me. Through emails. (Yes, he’s old school like that). Naturally, me being my usual skeptical-bitch-self, I replied along the line of  – The fuck are you ?; Fuck off; Leave me alone; Is this a prank ?!

Ha. Funny how the tables have turned. Our next several correspondences consists of him trying to calm me down and me grilling him to admit that this (whatever that is at that time) was a prank. He didn’t, though, and finally, like in all love stories, I caved.

I got to know him. He got to know me. We were deeply attracted to each other. Once, there was this whole string of emails in which I tried to convince him to steer clear of me, because I feel like I’m damaged goods. By that point, I was afraid that I would get attached to him, and I didn’t want to be attached to a ridiculous, virtual relationship. He was only a newly minted soldier at that time, and he couldn’t be bothered with any other form of communication but emails. But that was completely fine with me. I’m not the kind of girl that glues her face to her phone all day. Anyway, he said he wants in this relationship with me anyway. So again, I caved.

We breezed through our first months together. I didn’t feel like anything big was changing in my life, the way your life usually does when you have a new partner. Mostly because our relationship was virtual. It doesn’t feel real at the time, to be honest. (Baby if you’re reading this now, I love you.) But yes, I was slowly but surely getting attached to him. We talked almost everyday, with the exceptions of long intervals where he would go radio silent when he was assigned to a mission, or just simply busy with his duties. And I understood. Again, I wasn’t an overly attached girlfriend.

I was still in high school those first few months. (I just graduated on June 2016) So I was pretty occupied with my friends and my real life. Not just him. Then, about eight months into our relationship, I believe (I consider the start of our relationship is his first email, so October 2013), he showed up. Like, showed up.

Fun fact #2. During mid-2014, I was busy hosting a few exhange participants as a Volunteer Host for AIESEC, and I acted as a host and guide to university students from all over the world, China, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Russia and many more. So I was spending most of my waking hours with them. Okay, back to his coming to Indonesia.

One day, I went home late at night, and my mother told me that there was a ‘bule‘ that came knocking on my front door, looking for me. Keep in mind that I live in a tiny neighborhood in Indonesia. Bule is what we call foreigners, white-skinned people in particular. I live in Surabaya, the second biggest city in Indonesia, and a bule is a very, very rare sight in my town. There are expatriates communities, but there are very few and between actual foreigner in Surabaya, let alone the neighborhood I live in. I live in the center of the city, not in a housing complex. It’s kind of a favela, so a slum in an urban area. Also my house is right across the biggest train station in my province, so there are actually quite a lot foreigners passing through who travel by train. But for one to actually come to a specific house ? Exceptionally rare. You might call the experience like finding a Pikachu it’s so rare.

Okay, so I freaked out. I made my mom describe the foreigner to me in painful detail. My heart was hammering, my world was spinning.

Backstory : I have always been attracted to foreigners. I never fall in love with Indonesian guys. (Well, except this one guy. Nvm) So, all my past relationships was always with foreigners, with bules. All of them was virtual relationships. So for one to actually come-a-knockin on my humble abode is a huge deal  for me.

Back to the story. I spent the whole night trying to guess who the stranger is. Of course, I already had a strong possibility and hoping that it’s Kayden, of course. But that possibility seemed worlds away. He was deployed. He rarely gets a leave from deployment. And he was deployed to Tikrit, Iraq at the time. (Chill, milsos who are reading this. He’s not there anymore. I’m not violating any OPSEC.) It was so expensive to fly from Tikrit to Surabaya, not to mention a pain with flight transfers and everything. It was a long way to travel. So I pushed the possibility of the stranger being Kayden to the farthest corner of my mind. That is, until I received an email.

IT WAS KAYDEN. I freaked out. He said that he had came as a surprise, and he’s staying at a hotel I know well, very very close from my home. He said,

Can we meet ? – Kayden E. Caballero

I was like, DUH. I actually leapt from my bed, brushed my teeth and drove straight to where he was staying. (The journey was two minutes long.) Okay, so this hotel. Garden Palace Surabaya. I’m way too familiar with this hotel and their staff, because a decade ago, my dad had stayed in this exact hotel for 10 whole years. Needless to say, every staff in the hotel knows me. You really have to applaud Kayden on this. Bad timing, bad place choice. But at that point, there was nothing that can stop me from meeting my boyfriend. So I came. I was a nervous wreck. I did EVERYTHING wrong. I mean EVERYTHING.

I didn’t have time to put on makeup, and that was something I never do. I was under so much pressure, I wasn’t confident at all, I was extremely insecure, and that night ended up so bad and so awkward. We ordered coffee and a few snacks in the hotel restaurant, and I was under so much pressure that I didn’t wanna be there a second longer than necessary.

Now that I think about it, it’s probably my anxiety getting the best of me. Kayden was the perfect caballero. (See what I did there *wink*) He was very calm, he told me to take it slow, and I was so distracted with everything that wasn’t happening that I didn’t appreciate what was actually happening. And what was happening was that Kayden, my US Army soldier boyfriend, took his one week long leave to go spend half of the time to travel back and forth from Iraq to Indonesia to meet me, Lulu. I was just a high school girl from Indonesia. I was nothing.  I was so close to a panic attack that I could not get over my own head, and I wanted to go home so bad. And leave him. And that’s what I did.

To this day, I thank God, I praise God, with everything I have, that Kayden didn’t give up on me back then. He could have been offended, gave up, and just leave. Then he would probably go on with his life like nothing happened and I would lose the best thing that ever happened to me. But alas, he did not. He emailed me again, and we rescheduled.

In a nutshell : the following day we met. I made him wait for 45 minutes because I was so meticulous in dressing myself up, so careful in applying my makeup. It was the most important day of my life. We spent the most magical day together. I’m going to post the rundown in my next posts, it’s going to be a long ass one. Wait for it, I See You Part II (:

So yeah, ever since he came to visit me. Again, he had 7 days to just sit back and relax. He could have gone home to his family in England. Or home to New York. He chose to travel from Iraq to Indonesia and back, for little ol’ me.

 

After he got home, I was obsessed. With him. With us. I researched everything about being a military girlfriend, and I was so overwhelmed with what I found. I’m a MilSo. Military Significant Other. There is SO much responsibility that comes with that. There was this group of women, bonded by a purpose. All these women are so strong it made me cry, I was so moved. Girlfriends, fiancees, wives. Everyone’s story was different. But we are all incredibly tough women, the backbone for our soldiers. Eventhough you don’t know each other, when you see a Milso’s Instagram page, or a Facebook comment, you can’t help but feel a strong bond to them. True story.

The world of Milsos can’t be understood just by anyone. We endure a lot of things. I have grown so much because of Kayden. Simply because I’m his partner. I try to always keep up with what’s happening with him and with the States. It’s no easy feat, I assure you. At least all these other Milsos live in the same country, live on the military bases with their spouses. Me, in addition to being a girlfriend (not an official status, I don’t get to have dependent papers), plus we’re in a long distance relationship. I don’t mean long distance as in deployment. The other soldiers, when they come home after deployment, they come back to their loving partner and family and their home. For Kayden, all three of those things are in different places. Different continents. I’m in Indonesia. His family is in England. His home is in New York. So it’s not easy. Never easy.

Our relationship is hard. We have every obstacle known to relationships. So first, we decided to be in an open relationship. As in, we’re free to date other people. Then, on November 2015, he proposed. Don’t get excited just yet. I accepted. I flew to cloud nine, lived on cloud nine. For 7 months. Last May, I broke off the engagement. It came with a whole lot of other complications. It changed the whole dynamic of our relationship. I felt suffocated with this title of fiancee, with being engaged. Now, when we were in an open relationship, I never dated anyone else. Kayden himself was in another relationship with his doctor, Leila. (More on that on I See You : Part II) So, we had a long talk about our relationship and how we should move forward.

Him being his usual selfless self, said yes to every single one of my requests. Now, we’re back as only boyfriend and girlfriend. He’s the biggest part of my life. We are both very religious, which is important to me. Both of us are spiritual too, him more than me. I think, with him being a soldier, his relationship with God is very vital. I’m so glad, that he loves Our Father more than he loves me.

What else… ? Yeah. Knowing about Kayden is a big part of the journey of knowing me, too. He’s everything to me. We are more in love than ever. We do talk a lot less than we used to in the first months of our relationship, though. But I am more certain in where we stand, and I do think not talking often is not a big deal. I know him, he knows me. He’s one of the people who knows me best on this whole wide world.

I can’t stress enough how big his role is in my life. He was such a big part of me getting over the worst days in my depression and anxiety. It’s an ongoing uphill battle, for sure. But my family supports me, my friends are here for me. Kayden is as much my backbone as I am his. And with God by my side, I’m going to be just fine. God is bigger than all of my demons.

Before I end this whole thing, I’ll send you off to read the rest with this song.

We’ve been together for quite a while. Going to hit the 3 year mark on October 2016, and I do hope I can get into more details in I See You : Part II. I initially wanted to post this as a more present day storytelling of me and Kayden, with only a backstory of how we met. Turns out, the Lulu voice and Kayden voice wanted me to tell you the whole shebang of how we met. Don’t blame me. Blame them. So I do feel like I’m not digging quite deep yet with this, but I will try to rectify it in Part II. 

I send you off with all my love. Please pray for his well being, his constant safety. I’ll also try to include more of his emails in the next posts, because he is the sweetest talker ever.

I promise, eventhough this Part I is completely random, I’ll try to give you more a sense of understanding in my next posts.

 

 

Infinite Xs and Os,