The Soul-Crushing Burden Between Close-Knit Hearts

Hands that can’t be held. Feet that can’t be followed. Two pairs of ocean eyes that can’t quite hold a staring contest, even if they try. What is distance, if not a soul-crushing burden shared between close-knit hearts?

If we didn’t have the technology we did today, we would have never met. Though we did, but at first we were wary. It’s not like now, feeling as though we’ve met and loved in every lifetime before this one.

Do you know how it’s stereotyped, in marriages, that partners make a bit of a schedule for their “alone time” after a while? We’ve fallen into that kind of comfort, a routine if you will, for long calls. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best times we have to spend lots of time on the phone together. We cook dinner “together” and watch funny videos “together”. He puts together a puzzle, I put away laundry. We enjoy mundane tasks in each other’s virtual company on all the days and times we are able.

When I was younger, I heard the saying “distance makes the heart grow fonder”. I understood the implication of the saying, but I never knew the feeling. Never knew that it would one day apply to me and my feelings for him. Though my heart grows fonder, distance also tears it to pieces. There are good days and bad days. We talk for hours, and I’ll leave a call smiling and content. Mere hours later, and I could be crushed by the realization that he’s asleep, and I will have to wait “forever” for him to wake up again. It’s always a guessing game as to whether seeing a happy couple being in that moment together will make me sad, or if it gives me hope that soon that will be us.

I’m longing for the day when we won’t have to continue to hang up the phone, or leave again to go home and be apart. I will continue to long for the day that we can hold each other, knowing we will never have to go back home again, because we will share one. My heart truly has grown fonder, and while I thank the distance for that, I also curse it every day for removing the one person I want to share my time with away from arms length.