I love you 3,301

How do you go back to life as usual when you’ve left the other half of your soul on the other side of the globe?

How do you crawl into a cold, empty bed alone after your roommate picks you up from the airport?

Should I sleep on my side of the bed? Or his? Which would be more heartbreaking? Or should I sprawl across the mattress, aching to hear a complaint about how much room I take up even though it’s only because I always want to be close to him.

Have you ever been sitting in an airport, people watching, and spotted someone with tears streaming down their face? Maybe you watched them, very discreetly of course, as they tried to keep quiet and catch some of the tears and snot with a sleeve or a spare napkin. You could see the sadness and I bet you even made a few guesses in your head about what the source of that sadness was.

That’s me today. It was me a few months ago. It’ll be me in a few more months.

I know the woe-is-me long-distance-sucks story has been told a trillion times. But I suppose now I understand exactly why that is. I bet that it helps every other writer process that deep sadness just as much as it’s helping me right now.

Because last week, I got married. A year ago I was sitting on my couch coming to terms with the fact that maybe I wasn’t destined for marriage or long-term love at all. And now I’m married. And I just had to say goodbye to my husband and fly back across the ocean.

I met a boy. In Scotland. A girl from a middle-of-nowhere town in Upstate New York fell deeply and uncontrollably in love with a boy from a middle-of-nowhere town south of Edinburgh.

I was lucky. So, so lucky that I got in an uber and went to meet a tall boy with a beautiful smile for drinks. And I’m even luckier still that when his car started leaking coolant on his drive up to Edinburgh, he kept going so he could see his friends instead of turning around and calling the weekend a wash.

I am lucky. Every single day, with every single breath I take. Because I took the uber and because he kept driving.

And now, nearly ten months later, I’m sitting in JFK with a ring on my finger, battling every instinct in my body that’s screaming at me to turn back, to not get on the next flight to Rochester. I miss him so much it hurts, and I’ve only been away from him for 14 hours.

But it’s a comfort. To know with every fiber of my being that I love him. And to know what it’s like to be loved so deeply by such an unbelievably pure soul. I know that for every day we spend apart, every g'morning and g'night kiss that we’re robbed of, every hug I need on my worst days, we’ll double it. We’ll do whatever it takes to make the life we yearn for a reality.

One day I’ll go to sleep with him, and I’ll wake up with him, and we can smile to ourselves knowing that we’ve done it. Knowing that there’s no flight home hanging over our heads. There’ll be no more countdowns on my phone to when I get to see him again, to feel his heart beating when he holds me against his chest.

When the day comes that we’re sitting on our couch watching a Liverpool match, windows open and a candle lit; when his arms are around me and there’s nothing trying to pry us apart; then I’ll remind you all again just how lucky I am. For now I’ll think about how I might find some more words to get through it.