On Loving From a Distance

Okay, this entry is going to be a little more personal than usual, so just stay with me.

If you had asked me about long distance four years ago, I would have laughed. Not cruelly, just… skeptically. I would have said, why would anyone willingly put themselves through that? And more than that: can it even last? Can something so stretched, so intangible, really be called a relationship?

That was before I found myself in one.

And now, writing this from the other side of it: almost at the end of the distance, which feels surreal to even say, I think I understand something I didn’t before. Something quieter. Less obvious. But far more real.

Love, real love, does not depend on proximity as much as we think it does.

Of course, there is a kind of love that thrives on presence. On shared mornings, on hands brushing accidentally, on the ease of simply existing beside someone. That kind of love is beautiful, and I won’t pretend I haven’t longed for it ached for it, even.

But long distance teaches you a different language of love. One that is built on intention rather than convenience. On choosing someone, again and again, without the reassurance of their physical presence. On conversations that have to carry more weight, because they are all you have on certain days. On missing someone so much it almost becomes its own form of intimacy.

There is something almost… literary about it.

I used to think that line from Jane Eyre was exaggerated, the way old love stories tend to be. “It is but your soul that I want.” It sounded poetic, but distant from reality.

And yet, I think long distance is the closest I have ever come to understanding it.

Because when you cannot have someone’s presence, what remains is everything else. Their voice. Their thoughts. The way they see the world. The way they choose you, even when it would be easier not to. The way you build something that is not held together by routine, but by something far less visible and far more fragile.

And somehow, it holds.

It is not easy. I don’t think it is meant to be. There are moments where the absence feels louder than anything else. Where time zones feel cruel, where goodbyes linger too long, where you start to wonder how something so full can also feel so far away.

But there is also a kind of certainty that grows in that space.

Because when someone is not physically there, you cannot rely on the comfort of presence to convince you of love. You have to feel it in other ways. In consistency. In patience. In the quiet decision to stay.

And that kind of love… it is different.

It is deliberate. It is tested. It is, in a way, stripped down to its essence.

So now, standing at the edge of this distance finally coming to an end, I don’t feel relief in the way I thought I would. Not just relief, at least. I feel something closer to gratitude. For having experienced a version of love that asked more of me and gave more in return. For learning that love is not just about being next to someone, but about choosing them even when they are not. For understanding, finally, what it means to love someone beyond the physical.

This was for you.I love you.