I would argue that the cliche “relationships are never easy” is largely untrue. After spending a year with my boyfriend at a different school two hours away, I begin to think back to when things were so easy, when we went to school with each other everyday and saw each other across the soccer fields at practice every night. Life seemed so simple, like a movie with no plot, just the happy scenes flashing by. Just as things were perfect though, an era came to an end. In the blink of an eye, we graduated. Summer faded away and college begun, and with it life begun over again.
In the beginning, I used to wonder whether I was missing out on the full college experience by investing my energy in a long distance relationship, but now I know that that relationship is a huge part of my personal college experience. Though much of my class time is spent looking longingly out windows daydreaming of studying abroad together, my weekends out of class are adventures up and down the coast. Train rides and road trips through mountains and along oceans never seemed quite as beautiful until my destination was to see him. However, time never seems to stretch far enough, and weekends always seem to end bittersweetly. It becomes a monotony of packing and unpacking a bag, looking in the mirror, looking at my life, and getting lost between so many worlds. I jump on a train or inside a car, and miss him all over again. With every curve of the tracks, with every bumb in the long winding road home, I feel my heart lunging to be closer, but I feel my body drifting so far away.
“Is it worth it?” people often ask me, “to only spend few days out of a month together?” I shrug my shoulders, but I know I would rather do nothing with him than something with somebody new. Sure, it’s been difficult figuring out who I am without the person who makes me feel most like myself. I used to search for him in everyone I met, but would only end up disappointing myself. I’ve learned to value the people around me and to identify in them things in myself which I hadn’t before realized. So I guess a long distance relationship has made me more independent, more self aware, and certainly more grateful for the things I used to take for granted. As I write this, miles separate us, weeks have passed since our last visit, and flurries of memories run through my mind, but just to have those moments locked inside the vault of time has been worth every day apart, and I would do it again just for every day we spent together.