On Long Distance Love And The Choices We Have To Make

‘What are you doing?‘, he asked, a broad, sympathetic smile spreading across his face as mine dissolved into a crumpled, soggy mess. ‘It’s not like I’m going to war.’

Love gives one human being the potential to damage another beyond repair, and sometimes, it’s effortless. To me, that’s the single most terrifying thing in the entire world. Sometimes people happen to things, and sometimes things happen to people.

Human beings do not complete other humans. He is not and will never be the staple component of my happiness. However, one year on, he’s a very significant, raw part of it. He, more than most, has the power to effect how I feel on a daily basis. And I think that realisation hit me like a tonne of bricks as I watched him pack up his worldly possessions for an adventure that I’ll never fully be part of. Shit. He matters. He really matters. I love this silly, clever, imperfect human more than I ever allowed myself to believe. 

So now I’m here, and he’s there, and maybe our lives just won’t fit together anymore. Perhaps I’m ungrateful and silly and in desperate need of perspective, but right now, it feels a bit shit. But would I want it not to feel shit? Would I want to lose all of the beautiful, funny, touching moments that have lead to this snotty, teary, HIDEOUS face? No. I wouldn’t. I’m not certain of many things right now, but I’m certain of that.

I’m certain that I choose this, whatever this might be. I choose fear. I choose not knowing. I choose the 2am pang of loneliness when I wake up and my bed doesn’t smell of him anymore. I choose gratitude over greed: fierce gratitude that I have met and that I am with this wonderful person. I choose the crappy days where all I want to do is fall into his arms and bitch about the universe and he isn’t there to hold me. I choose the awesome, happy, ‘yes-and-yay-life-is-awesome‘ days that may never have existed had we not been in this situation. I choose creative, spontaneous declarations of affection. I choose excited, wide smiles at train stations and frantic, salty kisses through car windows. I choose the adventure of two hearts and two cities and ‘TWO-MORE-DAYS!’. I choose snot and tears and HIDEOUSNESS. I choose embracing how things are and missing how things were.

Sometimes things happen to people, and sometimes people happen to things. He may not be going to war, but I am. It’s a war in which I choose him. I choose to love him more than I choose to hate the expanse of time and space between us. I choose trying, because that’s what love is and that’s what love is about. And I can only hope that’s enough.

“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.” John Green, The Fault in Our Stars.