Four years of long distance
Apr 13, 2024 | About 5 min reading time
Four years ago, on April 12th, 2020, my partner and I started dating.
We're long distance, both broke, and started dating right before pandemic restrictions went into full swing, so we're celebrating our four year anniversary having never met face to face.
It's strange, knowing you want to spend the rest of your life with someone who you've never been in the same country as.
We met on a Discord server for people on the aromantic spectrum, ironically. From that server, she ended up joining mine. But at the time, she found me off-putting, and was planning to leave my server.
Until I banned her from it.
See, I'd provoked a fight in the aromantic Discord server, and, with everyone there pissed at me, I panicked and banned any of them who had joined my Discord server. I didn't know that my soon-to-be partner wasn't even friends with any of the folks I'd started this argument with.
Luckily, she happened to have added me as a friend on Discord shortly before this happened... so I woke up to a baffled message from her asking me why she'd been removed from the server. I embarrassedly explained, and she - to my surprise - took my side and asked to rejoin my server, so I invited her back.
Sometimes I think back on how embarrassed I was for her to have seen me act that way, completely unaware of how differently things would have turned out had she not.
Over the next month or so, we started getting to know each other better. We became friends, and it became increasingly obvious that she was interested in me (she asked me at one point what I wanted in my ideal queerplatonic relationship, I believe unprompted). Eventually, she asked me to be her queerplatonic partner, and I said yes - but with some disclaimers.
At the time, I'd never been in a relationship that had lasted more than three months, let alone a long-distance one. My last three major relationships before this had ended terribly, too, and I had grown accustomed to having my boundaries repeatedly broken and then being treated as a monster any time I failed to suppress my frustration and anger about this. In fact, I'd begun to believe I was an angry, volatile, and overall terrible person.
So shortly into this new relationship, I warned my partner of my tendency to lash out - and just in case what she'd already seen wasn't enough to convince her, I even sent her screenshots of other times I'd lashed out at people, including exes.
She didn't seem to be fazed, which made me a little concerned for her.
Eventually, about a month after we began our queerplatonic relationship, we decided we wanted to define our relationship as romantic instead. Neither of us care very much about the distinction between queerplatonic and romantic at this point, to be honest, but back then, it seemed important. Things went well for another month or so.
Then I fucked up.
For a variety of reasons, I was feeling very paranoid at this time. I made a dumb choice that exacerbated the paranoia for a bit, and while paranoid, I became convinced that she was going to hurt me somehow and it wouldn't work out anyways, so I... dumped her.
It is worth noting that this was very much an issue of my mental state, not anything she was doing wrong. I'd actually reached out to her ex before this, while paranoid, to ask him if he'd had any bad experiences with her, and he - despite having just learned that his ex he got dumped by recently was now dating someone else - immediately reassured me that she wasn't that type of person at all.
Anyways, I sent the message, immediately began bawling, went to my mom and told her what had happened (this was how she learned I was dating my partner, by the way - I hadn't been sure how she would react to me dating someone I met online) and she talked me through the full-on mental breakdown I was having and encouraged me to message my partner again, explain fully what had happened, and be really honest about my feelings for her. So I did, and my partner and I got on call and talked, and luckily for me, she understood and was willing to forgive me... as long as it never happened again (it hasn't).
The next month went by without incident. And the month after that, too. And the month after that. We would get on call each night and just talk about anything and everything, for upwards of four hours, every single day. In fact, we... still do that. We are the embodiment of every meme you've ever seen about long-distance lesbian relationships. If you calculate all that time spent on call together, it comes out to 5844 hours in total, at least. Holy fuck.
Each month, I remember feeling surprised - she hadn't dumped me yet, and I hadn't gotten mad at her. In fact, I was... happy. Like, consistently happy. When issues arose, I could just talk to her, and we'd work it out. She never invalidated my feelings or pushed my boundaries. When I had traumatic flashbacks, she'd stay up on call with me to reassure me.
For our first Valentine's Day together, she got me a pig plushie, which I very creatively named Piggy and then immediately got so attached to I cannot sleep without her in my arms. And for our one-year anniversary, she got me a replica of the mermaid pendant from the game Stardew Valley (which is a pendant you give to a villager when you want to marry them). I sadly don't have the original, as it was glass and I dropped it because I'm clumsy, but it did last over a year at least! I bought us both a clay version of the pendant shortly after, which we both still have. Plus, I still have the note she attached to it:
(She was going by Hazel at the time, but now goes by either Samus or Kara)
When I discovered I had DID, she supported me and did her best to get to know each alter and make sure we all felt loved and supported by her. When I was living in an unsafe area while attending university, she did her best to help me, even when it was just being on the phone with me as I fell asleep because I didn't feel safe in my room. When a guy I'd befriended at university kept pushing my boundaries, she helped me calm down from a panic attack and told him to leave me alone (and he did, surprisingly). When I worked at a toxic workplace that was wreaking havoc on both my mental and physical health, she helped me work up the courage to quit. When I felt weird about my body, either because of gender dysphoria or my eating issues, she reassured me and was there for me while I worked through those issues.
I cannot begin to fathom a world without her in my life.
So anyways, in conclusion, my partner is:
- Amazing
- Hot
- Gorgeous
- Stunning
- Beautiful
- Pretty
- Talented
- Cute
- Adorable
- And many more things I won't list here because otherwise this list would be incredibly long!