I always love this time of the year. Coming into summer, it brings some very happy memories (as opposed to January-April, which generally has many sad memories for me).

The Ninth of May was our anniversary. FOUR YEARS we have been together, and for those of you who weren't at GA back then to remember, I'm gonna do a little recap.

We met right here on this very site. If you go back and read my old blog entries you will see that I was trying to act straight in real life, scared of my family and what they might think. Paya had been a member of GA much longer than me, and we met in chat. HE had read something I had written in a blog that just spoke to him.

I think its fair to say that he chased me while I was frozen like a terrified cat. We sort of danced over the course of a few weeks, trying not to fall for each other too fast and failing completely. We were entirely obvious - we both wrote blog entries and it was clear to everyone that we were talking about each other.

Over the past four years, we have overcome long distance - he was in the Czech Republic, and I was in the UK. Fast forward to two years ago this week, and Paya was getting off a plane, and I was meeting him at Liverpool street with flowers and keys to our new home.

I never imagined this is how my life would play out, but now my mum treats Paya like a second son, my Dad and his soon-to-be-wife adore him and my deeply religious 85-year-old grandmother prefers Paya to me by a considerable measure

At the End of June is the anniversary of when we first met "in person", although by that point it really was too late At the End of August is the first time I went to the Czech Republic. You can see why these next few months are filled with happy memories for me :-D

I'm writing this for two reasons. The first is that I have never felt as happy as I do right now, and so when many of us spend so much time sharing the dark side of life in our blogs, it's nice once in a while to be positive.

The second reason I'm writing this is because a relationship - especially long distance and started in the "online" world - is hard. It takes effort, and courage. You will have so many challenges, and at times it will seem like the whole world wants you to be miserable. But if there's anyone else out there finding - well, LOVE - on this site, I'm not saying that to put them off. I'm saying that because despite all those things... IT'S TOTALLY WORTH IT.

Have a great day

West