It’s fair to say you lose some sense of your sanity and well being as you meander through the course of a long distance relationship. Day to day life becomes almost unbearable you feel that you’re partaking in life, but that life itself is passing through you, passing you by bit by bit. In this state you can start to question yourself, and you can also start to question your other half (Which is always a tricky game at the best of times). This questioning, in turn, tends to be greatly multiplied when she’s on the other side of the world.
You know things will work, and you’ll be back together soon enough, but that doesn’t make it any easier, any more bearable. Physical distance is one thing mental distance is a completely different feeling. To know you’re not really connecting with the one you love on a day to day basis is disconcerting. All you hear is old news, recycled news that is delivered to you with less effort, less emotion, less impact, less panache. The other person has already experienced his or her day why would they feel like replaying the news frame by frame to you?
Sometimes your body decides not to play along with your restless mind humming with questions, theories, help, guidance, love and sometimes anger. You can’t speak because the mouth can’t keep up the body is weak after a day of work. Sometimes you find yourself with a whole day to ponder a Skype or Viber call, to read into stuff that’s not there, to judge and be judged, to jump to conclusions, to question, to basically drive yourself that little bit more insane as the other person sleeps. But you know they’ll wake up with the same feeling you went to bed with, a head full of unanswered questions and unsolved emotions.
Sometimes you don’t get a chance to talk every day, sometimes this stretches to two maybe three days or longer. In this time period, your mind can almost consume you, you can’t focus on the day to day. You see everything and sometimes everyone as mundane, you become almost bitter. You become jealous of friends, of the life they are living, the love they are sharing, the joy they are feeling while you sit there stewing in a ball of confused and stunted emotions, pondering the use in becoming a recluse full stop. But it's times like this these no matter how shitty or unfocused you feel, to use an age old cliché you have to dig deep, to summon an inner strength, a mental reserve.
You have to remember what that person on the other side of the world means to you. How they’re trying to motivate you, encourage you. Most of the time we don’t let our hearts speak over our minds. We let ‘common sense’ prevail; you start to question the very reason you’re feeling a certain way. Why am I feeling like this? I shouldn’t be feeling like this?!, I bet you their not feeling like this, and it goes on and on ad infinitum. Until you’re back to square one questioning yourself and the whole point of it all (life that is).
Not only do I feel like the past 5 months or so have been the hardest I’ve ever faced, I know they’ve been the hardest months I’ve ever faced. All this time I’ve been without the one I love, my rock of sanity and dependence, but at least it’s coming to an end. In 30 short days this whole period of my life will draw to an end, and hopefully, it will never open again.
If anyone is reading this having started off on an LDR or find themselves in the middle of one all I can say is that it will get better. The gamut of emotions you feel every day can be managed but never tamed. Just don’t let them consume you because they will make you endure some of your darkest days. Don’t lose your sanity and most importantly never question the one you love. Know that the love you feel is being replicated although you mightn’t always feel it, or hear it every day, but it’s there. It’s like an inner flame the one thing that will keep you going no matter how many dark days you endure. After all at the end of the day Amor Vincit Omnia!
T minus 30 days.
