yammay.

How Long-Distance Sort-Of Dating Works

By Marla Miniano

Go out several times—dinner, coffee, the requisite rom-com, three beers each in a cozy artsy bar with low lighting and the smell of cigarette smoke emanating from every nook and cranny. Talk about your family. Talk about his family. Talk about your friends. Meet his friends and want to impress them but not look like you’re trying to impress them. Laugh at each other’s jokes. Send constant, unnecessary text messages like “Are you still up?” and “:)” and “Hahahahaha, okay.” Hold hands. Hold hands crossing the street for everyone to see, but hold hands secretly at first. Hold hands under the table, like the starry-eyed teenagers you morph into in one another’s presence. Allude to liking each other, come very, very close to confessing you like each other, and then, a few hours before your flight, finally admit that you like each other. Almost expect him to burst into the airport at the last minute with a bouquet of yellow roses and a banner that reads, “DON’T GO, I WILL DIE.” Be kind of relieved when he doesn’t; you want your story to be tender and poignant but real, not a ridiculous rainbow-colored Gary Marshall cliché. Hop onto the plane with a smile on your face and freeze-dried promises tucked into your carry-on bag.

Let that plane whisk you off to some secluded arts community halfway around the world, where you will stay and sleep and learn and write for two weeks or a month or a quarter of a year. Struggle to adjust to living your life a full twelve hours behind—you’re grabbing lunch while he is getting ready for bed, and when he wakes up in the morning, all lazy and bleary-eyed, you’re running on caffeine fuel and being bitchslapped left and right by a self-imposed eight PM deadline. Your heart, heart, heart is so jetlagged, and you don’t want to think about it this way, because really, Simple Plan and Natasha Bedingfield? COME ON. But that is precisely the way your heart feels, and it’s not like overplayed tacky pop songs have patents on human emotions.

Worry. Worry a lot. Worry some more. Pretend you’re not worried at all. Tell him you’re having a spectacular time, which you are, but worry that this would make him feel bad. Tell him you miss him every day, which you do, but worry that this would make you a stupid clingy whiner who leaves then clings and whines. Stalk him but always make it look like an accident, which sometimes it actually is (you swear!). Try not to gain weight; excess baggage is never a good thing. Try not to flirt with anyone, and try not to think about him flirting with anyone, and try not to keep tabs on who’s flirting with whom and who started it and why. Try not to be too disappointed when you log on to Facebook and that little green circle beside his name is MIA. Try not to call him in the middle of the night, because when it’s the middle of the night in his part of the globe, it’s high noon in yours, and pulling #dark, dramatic stunts like these when the sun is out is just pathetic. Instead, have fun at your secluded arts community halfway around the world. Meet tons of new people; keep the loneliness at bay. Most of the time, feel happy, productive, and fulfilled. And when you’re as happy, productive, and fulfilled as you can possibly be, pack your suitcase and plan to come home.

Finally come home. Go out for dinner, coffee, the requisite rom-com, three beers each in a cozy artsy bar with low lighting and the smell of cigarette smoke emanating from every nook and cranny. Talk about stuff. Unpause the relationship or ~special friendship~ or whatever-it-was you had to pause for two weeks or a month or a quarter of a year. Laugh and realize how good it feels to hear and see each other laugh again, as opposed to reading “LOL” or “ROFL” on a computer screen at one o’clock in the morning. And when you’re holding hands under the table or while crossing the street, know that if you can survive long-distance sort-of dating, you can survive absolutely anything. Know that this isn’t true, not really. But go on and try anyway.

(source: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/how-long-distance-sort-of-dating-works/)

Lost and found.

I miss who you once were. You were spontaneous and passionate and irrational. You sought adventure yet still managed to concede to restraint. Emotion oozed out of your fingertips as they brashly hammered away at the letters of the keyboard. The keys of your laptop used to be the gateway to your Narnia, where you found mysticism and awe and understanding of your very being. You rearranged the scrabble of the letters on the keyboard into meaning and emotion and art. And you never quite understood whose thoughts you captured into rhetoric because you couldn’t quite believe they could be your own.

I miss the person that fell so helplessly and passionately in love with the trivial things of this world – the eruption of colors in a sunrise and sunset, the patterns that rain makes as it rolls down a window; the lullaby of thunder and the pitter-patter of rain; the meaning and character of lightning; the energy of a live show that steeped through your pores in a shower of sweat; the sensory symphony of culinary creativity; the thrill and adventure in the new; the imagination of dreaming up a perfect stranger’s life story; the restlessness in routine; and the intrigue of lifestyles outside the confines of normalcy. These were the things that spoke very sincerely and profoundly to your core about the magnitude and wonder of the Man you serve.

Today, I found a piece of the old you again. It came in the form of a dear friend hesistantly knocking at the door of my soul. A voice in me wondered if it would even make sense to let the old you in. Was there room on the path I’ve found myself on for the two of us? Did I even need you anymore?

As Conscious and Logic began listing all the reasons to not, Instinct intervened for the first time in a long time. I opened the door to let the old you in, as irrational and adventurous as that may seem. Your passion and spontaneity embraced me. Your eyes lit up as you illustrated, with anticipated excitement, the energy you just experienced at Sunday worship led by Matt Redman.

And as I reacquainted myself with the old me, I sat down to write this blog, once again finding meaning and emotion and art at the stroke of my laptop’s keyboard, reunited with the piece of myself that I seemed to have forgotten in Texas.

Reminder

To myself:

Remember what is most important. Others will say things from the lens of their own perspective and tell you something is crucial when it is, in fact, trivial. Stay future-minded. Don’t get caught up in the accomplishments that hold no significance and foster feelings that vanish like breath on a mirror. Don’t be bothered by opinions that don’t matter from the people who hold no stake in your life. FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS. These are your priorities – don’t you ever forget them:

1. God
2. Family
3. School and your future
4. The people that matter to you
5. The things God has made you passionate about

Live your life accordingly. And soon enough, you’ll find yourself basking in the blessing of balance, hard work, and accomplishments that echo far beyond your imagination.

Pride

Why are humans such proud creatures? It baffles me how consumed with pride people become – so much to the point of oblivion to the destruction it brings to their lives. Pride is the death of relationships. Countless friendships are ended because one person is too proud to say I’m sorry and the other is too proud to forgive. People break up because the pride inside someone is so selfish it can’t coexist with anyone or anything else. There isn’t room for your pride and your partner. And your partner will be run to exhaustion trying to win against, or even compete with, the pride that dwells inside you.

Pride forces people to settle in the short-lived stupor of satisfaction of getting to where they envisioned they wanted to be. The result of settling is complacency to the urgencies of this world and passed up opportunities. It is such a shame how many choose pride over people and pursuits. GET OVER YOURSELF. What have you accomplished that is so worth throwing away opportunities and relationships?

Why are people SO AFRAID of humility? I really think this world would be a better place if pride didn’t force everyone to compete against each other. It bothers me how pride makes everyone think and act on their own behalf, for their own well-being, for their own selfish ambition. You can have my pride. I don’t want it. I want compassion. I want humility. I want to risk awkwardness and embarrassment for the sake of impacting the lives of others. I want to help when it’s not convenient, give when I have nothing left, and forgive when it hurts. I want to love the people I care most about, but more importantly, I want to love the people that are the most difficult to love.

I’m going to fight pride with love.

I just wish others would too.

(Note: I know I’ve been MIA from Tumblr for a while. I was upset with Tumblr. Really upset. Why? Whilst aimlessly perusing the pages of Tumblr, I tumbled right into some uber spoilage of Harry Potter. TUMBLR RUINED HARRY POTTER FOR ME. HORRIBLE, RIGHT?! I know. I was outraged. Nonetheless, I forgive Tumblr and I’m BACK.)