My Long Distance Love

"The feeling of being wrenched from each other every time our trips come to an end."

I posted that in a comment after my last trip. While it is easy, so easy, to speak of the wonderment of being in love and being with the man I love, what I haven't spoken of is the pain of each parting.

I would trade the nights in lovely hotels, the trips to exciting places, the serotonin rush of seeing the man I love each time for the first time again, for the routine of living close enough to go grocery shopping or to a movie or to just hang out together. I envy, so totally envy, the routine that so many people have together. The routine that they often wish wasn't quite so routine.

When we see each other at the airport, we rush to be together and you couldn't pry us apart with any amount of force. We slam together in an embrace that takes our breath away and it lasts as long as we can stand there, before realising that the sooner we get out of the airport, the sooner we can get to the hotel.

Every second we're together is amazing, just amazing. We drink latte together and we find a way to make it about loving each other. We sit in the car driving around and we're loving each other. We sit in a restaurant booth eating (carefully positioned on the same bench as he's left-handed and I'm right-handed) and we're loving each other. We do everything while we love each other, and we love each other while we do everything.

But the parting. The damn parting leaves me feeling raw every time. I can't even begin to describe what it's like as the minutes tick towards whichever of our flights is the first to leave. If there was a sound associated with us having to release each other, it would be like the millions of hooks on industrial-strength velcro being ripped from the anchoring loops.

The ache that starts in my chest and overwhelms me as our arms are forced to let go of each other. The emotional pain that turns physical as I watch the distance between us grow. The way I feel as though I can't catch my breath and I hear my heart pounding in my ears. How my eyes burn with tears, fighting to hold them back so he doesn't have to see me cry. The emptiness, the total and absolute emptiness I feel when he goes from my sight. And those long, lonely trips home.

I miss him. Christ, I miss him with a hole in my being that can't be filled unless I'm with him. Oh yes, I hear murmurs of 'she's in the honeymoon stage' and I probably am. Believe it or not, however, there is something so pure and right about how we feel when we're together, I believe this period will last long beyond any expectation. I've had two serious relationships, one of which led to a short and very unhappy marriage, but I can honestly say that I've never in my entire life felt the way I do about this man.

This man who completes me.

This man who makes me a better woman by loving me.

This man who opens himself to me and accepts all of me, even the imperfect sometimes hard-to-love me.

This man who gives me more love, and more reason to love and be loved, than at any time in my past.

This man who is the love of my life.

This man who is my future.