Rest-Stop Romance

"We are the perfect couple, we're just not in the perfect situation." 

Everyone wants to tell me how to handle my life, my emotions. Everyone wants to weigh in, not let me make the same mistakes that they did. Everyone wants to tell me those ignorant phrases like "it will get better" and "hang in there" but they don't understand the paroxysm, that heart wrenching pain that those stupid phrases cause. I don't want to hear it even less that they want to try to use those words for comfort. I imagine that at some level, they know they aren't helping one bit but they do it anyway.

If I could do it over again, I can't say that I wouldn't fall in love with him because loving him was the happiest time, the easiest time, the first time I really trusted someone to be there to catch me when I fall- and with my history, believe me, I fall a lot. I wouldn't trade the memories with him for the world but I can't fathom how I will be able to keep going without him. The saddest part is, it's not like we aren't together, we just aren't with each other. Long distance relationships are notorious for never working out in the end.

And yet, everyone is telling me to hang on, yet I look at is as, "what is the point if it is going to end anyway?". The wasted gas and mileage, the lost time just traveling are just the tip of the iceberg. It is one thing to be able to talk to each other in a relationship and no one knows more than me about how important that is. But it can't be everything. I don't want to repeat the jokes I heard or told- I want him to hear them and laugh with me. I don't want to tell him about the drug addict who asked if I knew where to get a high, I want to exchange weird glances with him after the druggie walks away disappointed. I don't want to spend our date at a rest stop off the interstate eating fast food. I don't want to live without him, I want to experience life with him.

But I can't, because we're so far apart. And people don't understand how painful that is, not even him.

I can't keep doing this. The only way I can imagine getting through losing him, is to lose him completely and move on- to distract myself. But I can't break his heart and I know he is the same in that regard. I'm just going to have to wait out the sounds of shattering glass as this slowly tumbles in a downward spiral. The end seems so far away and is going to be so painful. And I'm only going to be told "It will get better" and then someone will end up a fistful of my emotion in their face.

~E J Royson