Dedicated to Promise Li — boyfriend, best friend, and the rest. Thanks for three years of love and putting up with my antics.
Dear Long Distance Relationships,
Contrary to many, I don't hate you.
I'm glad you exist to test all the "I love you's" said to both marriages of forty years and open relationships that started one day ago. Your "I love you" not only says "My love doesn't depend on your body," but also "If you find someone else, then I'm happy that my distance has brought you closer to another." You must remember, commitment's sincerity is always tested by how much you can let go despite the instinctual need to possess.
Modern long distance is funny, held together by the strength of your WiFi and your network provider. Technology has never been more relevant in history. If you can't afford nice headphones, then you won't be able to truly hear your partner's voice for months, only static-y imitations. Same goes for bad camera quality on your phone and laptop--everything ends up pixelated, flat. You realize somewhere along the line that the "him" on the computer is not exactly him--and it makes the distance greater. In these cases, imitations are worse than absence, like reaching for a body that's not his just because it resembles.
Technology goes wrong, too, but like all things, it can be handled with good humor. For example, sometimes when my boyfriend and I fight, Skype lags. You don't think about these things, you know, when you start long distance. But life is like that, it's terribly inconvenient at all the right times. His face is frozen in a half yell, contorted and red. Mine is too, I admit it. But neither of us can stay angry at each other after being forced to stare at that image for a good two to five minutes, depending on how fast the internet reconnects. When his face flashes back up, our frowns are softer and our words gentler. I tell him I took a screenshot as blackmail. Despite all the differences that cause our arguments, we're both ugly in the same way when fighting--Skype reminds us of that.
I heard once that living with your significant other is like living the if-a-tree-falls-in-a-forest phenomenon. Things you never noticed or had forgotten about yourself in all those years re-emerge. Your partner points out that you never cap the toothpaste (when did that start?), and also that you brush your teeth before eating breakfast rather than after (isn't it nasty eating with bad breath?). Useless details that--in the grand scheme of the universe--impact nothing suddenly becomes details of self-identification in the eyes of your significant other. Your partner tells you things like, "You're the best person on earth because you brush your teeth the way you do." You become proud of something that banal.
Long distance is like that but in reverse. Instead of noticing things you didn't know about yourself, you reexamine everything that you do notice. What you eat for breakfast is sent via Snapchat, how you feel is documented over text, and there are hundreds of OOTD pictures on your phone. When there's distance, time becomes of the essence and each other's histories are kept safe within emails and behind PINs. Time becomes tangible. Last night's face time was one hour, 35 minutes and three seconds long; the Netflix show we watched together lasted 47 minutes, a number of days before I can hold your hand is exactly 34. Your partner tells you things like, "You're the best person on earth because your pictures are the only ones I backup."
I guess at the end of all this, what I'm trying to say is that all relationships have trials but long distance has been strangely beautiful despite it all. And in the end, I don't mind, and I know my boyfriend of three years doesn't either. Thousands of miles apart, alone together in cyberspace, clumsily flirting (still) — we're home.
With love,
Esther Kao
