I was very turned off to finding a relationship my senior year of high school. About to graduate, I knew I would soon move away from my hometown. There was just no point in starting a new romance.
I set my mind on the rest of my high school career. I even knew (or at least, I thought I did) what college was going to be like for me. At 17, I felt like I figured out the rest of my life.
Halfway through senior year, life interrupted my plans.
I became better acquainted with a guy I knew throughout high school that I absolutely hated. As it turned out, he was very interesting and kind. We talked for a month and loved every second. Eventually, we happily committed to a relationship. But I went into it thinking we would break up after graduation.
For anybody in a relationship, the words “long distance” are taboo. It’s nauseating. It means being really far away from each other and never getting to talk. I dreaded the talk about what we would do when we got to college. There was an unspoken agreement that we would split things off after graduation.
Nothing happened, though.
We kept seeing each other and no one said a thing. The first time either of us brought up the fact that we would soon move to different states for college, one of us immediately shot down the conversation.
It’s a year and three months later—about ten months after our high school graduation. We’ve made it this far. We conquered the mountain of beginning a long-term relationship. It wasn’t as taboo as we thought. Although half of our relationship has been spent apart from each other, it has taught me a lot of things about life.
It taught me that life isn’t about planning everything that comes your way.
Before the relationship even started, I set a time limit on it. I put a time limit on the relationship, counting on a breakup. But I didn’t plan all of the days that came in between now and then. We spent a lot of good days and bad days together during our senior year.
It’s impossible for you to know what you could be missing out on.
It’s very easy to assume that a long-distance relationship is just too much work. We found that it’s worth it to try. Otherwise, you’ll always wonder what could have been. You could break up a week into classes. It just wasn’t meant to be. If you never try, though, you will always wonder where the relationship could have gone.
Every day in a relationship can’t be planned, either.
Being in a long=distance relationship give us space to become our own people.
He goes to school at Coastal Carolina University. I live ten hours away at Pennsylvania State University. We never prioritized finding a school close to each other. We both needed to follow our own dreams. The distance is definitely hard, but it’s really nice to have room.
We’re very different people. We like different things and think differently. Our experiences are very different, and college is the perfect place for us to figure out who we are.
As young adults, we need room to grow. It’s hard spending every day with one person. It might stop you from experiencing things for yourself.
Distance has taught me to be okay with letting go, but also to enjoy every moment we spend together.
Saying goodbye to your significant other is so hard. When I left for college, we cried so much. And I wasn’t sure if we would make it through the first semester to see each other again.
I’m one of those people who’s not very good at living in the moment. I get too worried about what’s going to happen in the future. On my last day at home, I couldn’t enjoy being with him. Instead I worried about the pending separation.
Tears come with every goodbye. But they get a lot easier, because each goodbye means a hello will come soon.
But I’ve also accepted that there might not be another hello one day. Each time we leave one another, I get a little better at living so far away from him. It doesn’t mean I miss him any less. I’m just better at living on my own.
With all of the moments you spend apart in a long-distance relationship, you gain a better appreciation for the moments you live in now. You can’t control whether or not you’ll eventually break up. What’s wrong with feeling happy with how things are? There’s no need to worry if you’ll get the other hello. It’s okay to love what you have now. Living apart prepares you if a break up ever happens.
It really doesn’t make sense to throw something away that isn’t broken. We feel very happy together, so we should enjoy our time together while it still lasts—even if we live ten hours apart.
It might not last forever, but I’m happy being in a long-distance relationship. It’s shown me that you can’t put an expiration date on things and spend all of your time stressing about the future.
Our distance lets me appreciate being 19 while also being in love with my high school boyfriend. Hey, it might not last forever. But I can be who I am and be happy with what I’m doing for right now.
The guy I hated in high school ended up teaching me a lot about life. Who would’ve thought? You just can’t plan some things.
