“I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday”- Lemony Snicket.
To all the people in long-distance relationships out there,
I know it hurts. I know it hurts seeing everyone have that special someone to celebrate with, while you, despite having that special someone, are sitting and making plans with your single friends. I know it takes everything in you to not make a “big deal” out of it or to brush things off as a joke because you know that if you don’t, it is going to hit you. It doesn’t really seem fair, does it? When the couples get to go on (physical) dates together and the singles get to swipe and flirt, you are stuck in the middle of these two worlds, belonging to none. You get to have video calls that cut into your sleep schedules and dates that rarely ever happen because of the time difference. You get to wake up when they go to sleep and you get to look at them only through a screen. You get to see your I love you’s turn into I miss you and you get to learn to love them through distance and time and layers of screens in between. You get to not talk about them because they’re so far away and you get to miss talking about them because they’re so far away. You get to end all your conversations with a “come back soon” and you get to get used to missing them (every second of every day).
In a world of hookups and one-night stands, rare relationships and rarer love, it seems too early, too soon to be experiencing this kind of pain. Your friends know you hurt and that this hurts but I don’t think anyone can really know how much. Sometimes it feels physically impossible to hurt this much. It feels as if the hurt will drown you— not letting you come up for air, not giving you the permission to really hurt, not letting you weep your tears. Your days are spent convincing yourself that it’s okay and you’re okay and things are okay and everything’s going to be okay, while that voice inside you keeps holding on to all that sadness and misery that you constantly feel. You don’t allow yourself to feel the pain because it is a pain of your own choosing, a bittersweet one, if you may.
People around you have expiry dates for their relationships— when school ends, when we graduate from college— as if relationships are nothing but an exercise in convenience. Oh, I wish it was that convenient. I wish it was that easy. “Less than 50% of long-distance relationships actually work out,” they say. They don’t think you already know that? You have searched over and over the same questions, trying to convince yourself more than convincing them. They say it gets easier, that it’s supposed to, and that time makes things better in the end, but it’s been a year and they’re there and you’re here and it still, somehow, makes no sense.
You hold on to the hope that if not this year, then maybe next. You convince yourself that at least you’re under the same sky, and the same moon, and the same sun. You find solace in having someone to love for yourself and you end up finding solace in convincing yourself that “Aur bhi dukh hain zamaane mein mohabbat ke siwa, raahatein aur bhi hain vasl ki raahat ke siwa”.
Feature Image: Bustle
Manasvi Kadian
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