Love Story

I get asked pretty regularly how I survive my very long distance relationship. And I get asked pretty regularly how I've done it for nearly 6 years and we're still trying to get into the same place permanently.

The first answer is easy. We have Skype, we have email, we have iMessage. We talk to each other constantly. I talk to him 5-6 times a day and message all day. We share photos of our day, we relate our lives to each other in minute detail. And then we get home and we Skype we catch up on the news, social events, constantly talk tech, politics, gaming, comics, movies. We watch movies together because we can perfectly time our Apple TV's so we're in sync. We talk pretty constantly for 3-4 hours on Skype, plus during the day.

We have everything you have in your in person relationship, except that we're cooking for one and we desperately miss the cuddles, the kisses, and the intimacy that comes with being in the same country.

How do we do this for nearly 6 years?

Every day with him is a gift. All my previous relationships involved me giving more, being more, than my partner. I had to sacrifice so much to be with the person in loved. In a couple of relationships I nearly sacrificed my sanity to be with my chosen love. In this relationship we are equal. He encourages me to have my career, my passions, he builds my strength and confidence in myself every day, and he has never judged me for how I manage my fairly constant anxiety. He has never once asked me to not take medication. He has never once told me it's all in my head. He supports me every day through all my choices and I do the same for him.

Over the last 5+ years I have learned so many wonderful details of the man I love. From his terrible handwriting, to the time he spends in the shower, to the fact his poems always rhyme and he has no idea how to cook Spanish rice, but can tell me how to cook Spanish rice, it's all contributed to this glue that is us and what we're becoming.

Every day I learn new things, about what he loves, what we share, the passions and hopes we have for our future together and the children we want, the life we hope to live when we manage to make our dreams become a reality.

All those things are magical to me. And so, when someone asks how it is we can do this thing for so long, it mystifies me, because how can we not?

My dad always told me this story that he said was from Norse mythology.

In the beginning there was no man, no woman, there was just one being, one whole, perfectly balanced. Then the gods shook the earth and the being split in half and the halves were scattered all around the world, destined to search high and low for the other half that achieved the perfect balance. Sometimes that perfect half is a perfect friend, someone who understands you when you don't even understand yourself. Sometimes it's a life partner that gives you the strength to be all you want to be. They bring your soul peace.

In my life Americo is that. Both perfect friend, and perfect life partner. He is yin to my yang. Together we are the balance that allows us both to find where we are supposed to be. We never step in front of each other, trying to be first, we simply side by side provide the support that makes us bother stronger, better people.

There is no answer to why we keep doing this, how we can be this strong, this committed, this enduring. We simply are, because the alternative is that to be without each other doesn't make any sense at all.

Because we are us. And us is amazing.