Be calm, be brave, it'll be okay

Fuck. What was I thinking when I thought I could do this?

We haven't even been apart for two months, and there are fissures running the length and breadth of me. I can't touch him, hold him, kiss him, see him. The curse of multiple time zones means we're lucky to talk more than a few hours per week, and we usually can't help but catch each other right before bed or just before dawn.

It's quiet and rainy here tonight, and suddenly I don't know if I can fight hard enough to get through this. Two years? Twenty-four months of this? I feel like my whole world is coming to pieces. I'm just scared that without meaning to, we'll drift apart. We're busy people, busy by nature, most satisifed when we're flying between half a dozen tasks and events, brains chattering at dizzying speeds. When we live together, it's hard enough to "be" together for any amount of time. When we're apart? Like any couple in an LDR, we fill the hours to avoid thinking about the hurt and the loneliness -- but in cramming the waking life full, we don't let ourselves have time to miss each other. It's a double-edged sword: it doesn't hurt as much, and it's probably the only thing that lets us slog through every day without collapsing -- but it almost means we have to detach to survive. And what if we can't stop detaching? What happens when we get to see each other for a whopping two weeks this summer, and then go apart again? And again? And again? What if we grow apart without meaning to? Without realizing the space between us until it's too late?

There aren't any easy answers. It's happening to more and more people we know: if you aren't fortunate enough to share the same career interests (and, sometimes, even if you are), you may be bound for a time apart should you marry young. We knew it, and we knew it, and we knew it...but then it comes down to the wire and you realize that what we knew doesn't compare to what it feels like when it happens. But what are we supposed to do? Is one of us supposed to give it all up, which doesn't do anything but sow seeds of resentment that spring up overnight like dandelions? Is it even possible to find a middle ground where we can both do what we like without going apart for what we love?

Fuck. Sometimes I wish I could just be happy doing anything, and it kills me that I can't. And yet, I get frustrated when people suggest that this is the problem. No one ever asks why he can't give up his path. It's like it all comes down to me, the onus is on me, the problem is me. And the only one who doesn't see it that way -- even when I'm questioning whether they're right -- is him.

In the end, maybe that's why this has to work, even if it hurts in ways I didn't think were possible. Because the only one who understands me is eight thousand miles away. And I'd be a damned fool to let that keep us apart without a fight.