I knew there was a reason I had never brought this up with you.
It was a topic I avoided on purpose but for whatever reason, my brain short circuited that night and we started talking about it. I am the one who brought it up which shows you how much I wasn’t thinking. I pushed the conversation towards that topic forgetting everything that was tied to it. Forgetting what the idea of what long distance relationships actually meant to me.
It shouldn’t be a big deal. I mean everyone knows they are dumb and they never work out anyway. One person either loses the feeling, cheats or likes it better when the other is at a distance. Whichever way it happens, it ends with hurt and the feeling that someone could have done something more. There is also the afterthought of all the what if’s connected to these types of situations. what if both people had been in the same city, things would have never gone down like that.
There’s also the whole issue of the relationship taking you away from your current environment. It takes you out of the here and now and pulls you towards the other person’s circle. This ends up weakening both of your social lives because you are constantly trying to keep up with the other and the others friends but it’s nearly impossible when you can’t put a face with the name. You’ve never met half the people or been to any of the places the other is always talking about. Not to mention the fact that this means you are practically in a relationship with your phone now instead of the person on the other side. You fade out and lose the ability to actually talk with one another about things that are important and instead text daily about the boring everyday pieces that they should be there to see not have to hear about.
And while I believe all of that, it’s not the reason I avoided this topic. I feel like all of that is logical and rational whereas my real reason isn’t. I avoid that topic because it reminds me that I didn’t try to make it work with him. I signed off on the whole distance thing before he could even mention it (due to the items listed above mainly).
Long distance is a topic that hurts because I know that it can never be something I can participate in. I know that there will never be someone who can convince me to enter into a long distance relationship because he couldn’t even do it. The one that shaped me and loved me couldn’t show me that what we had was enough to make it work. The one that held a huge piece of my heart without even fully knowing it wasn’t enough for me to try and that meant we never had anything that you could define and stick a label on. I gave up any chance of having anything real with him because I knew I couldn’t be in a long distance relationship without going insane. And now the very idea of it just leads me back to him and all the hurt I caused because I was trying to avoid the pain myself.
I’m not strong enough you see. I would end up cheating. I would end up being miserable just waiting for him to come back. I couldn’t just not live my life while he was gone and I was in a new city. There were too many possibilities and new opportunities to explore for me to tie myself to someone who was going to be halfway around the world. Even if that someone was him.
I avoided having that conversation on purpose. He is the reason why.
Featured image via Elina Sazonova on Pexels
