“Distance makes the heart grow stronger”, it really is quite the common phrase. A few words stitched together to go some way to describing the sincere sense of loss you feel when you are torn away from someone you care deeply about.
Unfortunately for yours truly, 'distance' is something that I have no choice but to become accustomed to. For periods of time, of which always feel far more elongated than they actually are, I have to come to terms with the fact that I may not see the person who has come to mean more than the world itself to me.
I always swore that I would never allow myself to become romantically reliant on someone who was not within walking, or at least a bus, distance. And the opportune word there is reliant. The colloquialism we are most used to is 'romantically involved'. Romantically involved? What an absolute injustice to just about the most beautiful of human emotions. The word involved seems something of a cop-out in this context, in my humble opinion. It is such a fluid term: you can walk past someone, exchange a glance, allow a stranger off of a train before you board it, all of these actions involve you in someones day. So, you kiss someone and, technically, you have become romantically involved.
But that is not what it is to really care about someone. If you truly care for somebody, there isn't a second of the day that passes where you don't spare even a fleeting thought for them. It's the fact that when you look ahead, planning what you are going to do next week, next year, or however far in the future, you do so and when you visualise it, they are there. You need not ask if they are interested, you need not spare a thought that they might not be there, because in your head, they will.
And I shall share what I have learned, what I have experienced for the first time: when they go away, if only for a week, and you are starved of contact, as that is what it is, you are starved, you feel this insatiable hunger, just to talk to them, to send them the most menial of messages, just to incite conversation, and that conversation doesn't have to lead anywhere important, because you are talking to them, and that is literally allthat counts. When you are starved of them, you physically hurt, and you realise what it is to feel your love for somebody. And it is the most bizarre concoction of whimsical bliss and heartbreaking pain. And it is absolutely, sickeningly terrifying. It is scarier, so much more potent, than any physical danger I have ever been in. A knife will cut, asphalt will graze… but a fear will stick.
And stick it did, the fear that she would find someone better looking, more interesting, more deserving of her and her awe-inspiring ways. I'm not sure whether I expected or feared her coming home having found someone just as spectacular as she. I feel that maybe I was, not so subconsciously, preparing myself for the worst. So when I arrived on a sunny Autumn afternoon on Wednesday of this week, I wasn't sure whether I was walking into some sort of proverbial firing line. I waited outside the local Asda, wearing the clothes that I purchased with the sole intention of making her proud, and it transpired that I had got the wrong exit. Smooth. So I wait there, she said she would come and find me, not sure what to expect, thoughts firing around my head with the speed of a bullet and the sound of a bomb.
And then she walked around the corner.
And, with not a hint of exaggeration, any and every negative thought, every niggling worry, evaporated. A flume of relief so powerful it must have been close to visible.
She strolled up with her newly coloured dark hair, I'm guessing it must have been some sort of shade of cherry, and eyes so blue it made the sky look red. She almost looked embarrassed as I watched her. A simple, but delicate, “Hey you,” glided out of her mouth and crept through the air, through my ear. Unfortunately, her mother was there at that moment, so what I wanted to do would not have been entirely appropriate, and I feel as though the squeeze and kiss that she received went not a quarter of the way to showing her how I felt, how much I had missed her.
In the coming days we ventured into Ipswich for a drink at the pub with her friends, who were all rather lovely and very easy to get on with. We had a wander around Bury St. Edmunds, a lovely looking little town, where I bought a new maroon jumper, on her advice of course! Needless to say, I don't think there was a moment in the following three days in which we weren't attached at the hip.
You may have read that and thought that I have dedicated far too little of this to what we actually did, and I would understand completely why you would think that. But, the fact of the matter is that I journeyed down there just to see her, and that is all I wanted to do. I wanted to see her, hear her, hold her, kiss her. And I did all of those things, and for that I have had the most wonderful time.
I am pretty convinced that we have the most complete relationship I have ever come across, of mine or a friends. We are sickening, I am certain that she would agree. We are that couple who is always a couple. But it is more than that, she really is my best friend, I trust her with things I could not possibly tell anyone else. I am so much more than romantically reliant on her, I am emotionally reliant, and I luckily she seems to like it, otherwise she would read something like this a freak out, but she seems to love receiving my cringe-worthy messages almost as much as I love writing them.
I am not for one second saying that it would be the case that every relationship should reach this level. I am not for one second suggesting that this makes our relationship better than anyone else's. But it is perfect for me, and those who knew me before will know that there was a point where this sort of message would not have EVER materialised. But, Becki has utterly changed my life and on this here train, with a radiant sun percolating into the carriage accompanied with a beautiful view of a picturesque country field, I can only feel that just one thing would make this perfect. And, for that reason, for the reason that any vision of happiness I have is intrinsically intertwined with her presence, I feel as though I am one of, if not the, absolute luckiest man in the world.
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