Long(er) distance

We sleep with a FaceTime call open most nights. I can hear wave sounds from his noise machine where it rests on a shelf 400 miles away.

It’s been about a month since I last visited Montreal, which means I would usually be heading back. Over the years we’ve settled on a month as the best balance between longing and practicality — a month between visits, give or take a few days.

We have practice at this, I remind him. Our relationship is built on caring for each other from afar. More of our relationship has been long-distance than not. That’s what we get for being born in different countries.

Yeah, why the fuck did you have to be born in the States? He’s half-joking. Okay, maybe less than half.

We do what we always have: we drink coffee from our respective beds; we send each other memes; he counts down from three so we can hit play on Real Housewives at the same moment; we talk each other down from many ledges. We do long-distance the best we know how. We do it well. We always have.

But he is there and I am here and the world is falling apart in all sorts of weird ways. And the Canadian border is closed now. We have always overcome the forces set to keep us apart: money, distance, time. Not now. I am powerless.

We’ve added some new items to our routines. He reads me the latest infection numbers and I tell him secondhand stories from the hospital where my mom works; we visit each other's homes in Animal Crossing; we imagine what it would be like if one or both of us caught the virus, if either of us ended up with severe complications. We dance on Zoom, virtual palm trees swaying behind us, to forget where we are for a few hours at a time.

For the first time in a very long time I don’t know when I’ll see him next. I stare at blank pages and blinking cursors and attempt to lose track of time. I don’t want to know how long it’s been. Each day I grow more comfortable expressing my discontent.

It’s getting warm here. He’s jealous of the flowering trees. It’s still cold at night and windy, too.

And I’m really fucking scared I’ll never see him again. I listen to the wave sounds and think: tomorrow will be the day one of us starts coughing. I open ten tabs of data and reassure myself with the low numbers of young people dying from the virus. But they are dying. People our age are dying. I tell myself you’re being hysterical, unreasonable, you’re catastrophizing again. It doesn’t help.

I don’t have a lesson or a point here, not really. When I told my partner about writing this he said: hopefully it will be cathartic to you in some way. Maybe it has been.

The pandemic has brought a heaviness to our phone calls and Hulu sessions. He is just as far away as before, but he is also further, unreachable.