part 5: the unfortunate languishing in a tower part

I'm in Minneapolis. It is such a fun, fun city. There are a million things to do, a million people to meet. I can run and window-shop and attend festivals and visit museums and eat at a hundred different restaurants. But I can't help thinking how much better all of this would be if you were here.

All I want is to be with you.

I've never been the type to really miss people. I went to summer camp for the first time when I was seven or eight, and I was the only girl to not cry that night because they wanted their parents. I've traveled all over the world and have lived in strange places for months at a time. I don't get homesick. I tend to live in the moment with things like this, choosing to embrace whatever I was doing and wherever I was. And when I return, I always pick right back up where I left off with friends and family. I love my family and friends, and I love my home. I love being reunited with people I know and I love revisiting nostalgic places. But when I'm not there, I'm still okay. I don't dwell on it.

So I wasn't sure how this long-distance relationship was going to work or how I would feel about it, other than the fact that I knew that it wouldn't be easy. How would missing someone work? How much would I miss him? And how bad would it be?

It has been so hard.

It has been easy in the sense of continuing to grow our relationship. We still talk all the time. We text and call and facetime and we argue and tease and flirt and converse. We both put a ton of work into our relationship, and I can honestly say that doing this long-distance has not hurt our relationship at all. We've grown together, and we keep loving each other more and more with each passing day.

The fact that the above has been so easy makes the rest of it so hard. I miss distracting him while he studies and I miss having someone to hold my hand in the car. I miss the way he comes up behind me and grabs my waist and how we could cuddle after a long day. I miss telling him about my day face-to-face, and I miss watching him get ridiculously excited about things like space exploration and the tonal quality of a jazz trombone.

I miss him. A lot, it turns out. I've long been counting down the days till late September when I can see him again, and on paper it looks so short. But crossing each day off seems to take an eternity.

This has been the hardest part of the story so far.