Let this be clear - at most levels, I hate distance. As much and in the same ways as most other people in long-distance relationships.
In personal context, I hate how Sunday mornings become a minefield of nostalgia and yet we (Ok, I) have to play phone tag to share small nothings. I hate how I need to wait for minutes on end for you to pick up the phone so I can share the said small nothing and how by the time I actually have you on the phone, the moment is gone and I do not want to share anymore. I hate how melodramatic that makes me feel. And I hate more how stalkish and inadequate calling you fifteen times (even if in 10 second intervals) to convey impulsive, sweet nothing forces me to be.
In (what I think is) more general analogy, I hate more how I have to tell you over said telephone about how great it would have been if I could do all that I do on my own with you (I do not always want to sip wine and watch Closer with my platonic, bald best friend) and how much we could have done together if we were in the same place (waiting 45 minutes for a table at that Giocomo place is not the same without you) : especially when we both know that its more the choice of being able to do these things than actually doing them that I miss. To add to this, quite frankly, I do not understand time differences (what is it these people who subscribe to logic and science justify as a world clock and why does it exist?).
Yes, I hate distance.
And yes, despite my hate for all that distance does, I was the girl that had a high school long-term boyfriend that I began to date not through the six years I knew him, but in the last summer month before I left home (and him). I carried an important (and what then, was a very serious) relationship as prim baggage into a college that was 500 miles away and, predictably, drove myself to relationship denial when my first shot at love failed. Of course, when I recouped, it was not to the known arms of convenient college romance that I turned, but instead, to difficult, tough distant loves that were held in place by phone calls in the middle of the night and sweet letters that found me in remote college towns with often inaccessible postal codes. These long distance loves paved the way for what I now call my relationship in-expertise, right until I said yes to the first guy that asked me to marry him - only after a summer of remote dating and a week before I placed three continents before us.
And for this, I have only one viable explanation (even if I am afraid it does not hold me in very promising light).
Like many self appointed new-age citizens of the free (transitory) world, I hold people and memories closer than geography and most (if not all) of my important relationships operate through virtual realities that scan many miles and (often,) multiple planets. I have often argued (mostly, with friends that are concerned for my personal depth and well being) that this is not choice but rather a set of unavoidable situations tailored by chance related sequences. More personally, I have convinced myself of some sense of nobility attached to loving people despite distance and difficulty and a sense of truth in holding on to a love that offered no immediate comfort.
Initially, perhaps there was joy in the anticipation. In some sense, there was reason to believe that if the love was not there because it had to be there, it was there because it was meant to be. But rose ideology aside, I think there was joy in the manufactured sense of importance. I needed to believe that these loves were larger than they were because if I did not believe that, I had no material to spin with in my head. And without spinning it in my head, there was nothing to hold on to with the heart.
But after a decade in remote, unsuccessful dating, it is unclear to me if this search for a difficult hold-on is nobel, or even necessary. Are we tuned to search for loves that are difficult because of our perverse need to have people prove worthy of our affections? Or do we need to prove to ourselves that we are capable of being loved in these difficult ways to feel special? And irrespective of reason, what is it that ties it together when we have no real end to the remoteness? My remote intimacy issues have maimed my sense of being in love most of my adult life. I have loved in ways that I still contend are strong and yet, it is possible that I have had these strong affairs (selfishly) not with people but with my own overactive imagination.
And if that is the case, I am in no position to claim relationship expertise with you. I cannot tell you that I need more from this relationship and a commitment that is stronger and truer because if I am honest, I am unclear what that entails. I cannot tell you that you should hold on to this even when logistics pulls us apart and I wake you at 2 am to share drunk flirt talk. I cannot tell you that you do not love me as I do you. And I cannot cry when you tell me you do not know where this goes because, clearly, I have never really known the trajectory paths of my own pasts. I cannot grudge you as I so often do for letting go of something before it even was because I have failed to deliver every time a remote relationship has had the potential for fruition.
And yet, in spite of (despite?) my awareness of my own relationship inadequacies, I continue to think that deep connections are rare in a world where people know their multi-syllable-Starbucks-latte but shun making choices that call for personal confrontation. I think people in their twenties don't make easy friends and that childlike honesty in adult relationships is something that needs to be stored away in strong, happy closets to help salvage a lot of filth that life routinely sends your way. As a result, when I call you and deal with the reality that this is difficult and takes effort, I am in fact showing you more honest emotion than I have in the past because I am choosing to confront the not-so perfect perception that is the reality of an adult relationship - I am choosing you, over my working imagination.
So, please bear with me through my drunk accusations and seemingly insincere tirades. Forgive me for expecting through a haze that you dismiss as naivety because while you are as difficult to love, the least of our issues is logistics. While the distance continues to rear its nasty head, it does not make you unrealistically better for it. And this is, contrary to the way it sounds, a good thing. I do not need you to be away to realize I want this because I want you when you are here and when it is difficult and when you place the brown towels over the pink.
And because I have discovered that I love you when you are here, I am asking you to bear with my dramatic anxiety and calls for reassurance. I am asking you to bear with it not just because this is rare and happy even when it is difficult but, selfishly, because I am willing to confront my own teething pains of finally being in an adult relationship.
To non-distant difficults,
Me.
