"Distance has no way/Of making love/understandable"

What sort of distance, what sort of love? What kind of understanding? Ethan and I have physical distance which, as they claim, will make our hearts grow fonder and perhaps that's true. We never seemed to fight last year so far apart - there simply wasn't time for it - time to chafe at any quirks, to experience contentious difficulty, to build up a need for time apart. Discord was a luxury we didn't have. This year will be interesting to compare - we are separated now less by physical space and more by continuous time demands. No more scheduled working hours, no more audited classes, no more free weekends. I am not sure what kind of understanding this may or may not bring. I don't think I'll ever find flowing expression to truly explicate what our connection is. I can't explain it coherently, can't describe why it exists. Something with pheremones, probably, or young delusion... I hate the way I cheapen this with trivial words but to dredge up a lyric voice and serenely whisper what has grown to be the meaning in my life is too personal too emotional too demanding to flick casually into the void. I am not yet possessed of self will enough to try.

But then there are temporal and emotional distances also, of which I have my own fair share and the loves of which I still don't comprehend, despite years of trying. To be left, to leave intentionally from someone you care about is easy for no party without some kind of rage or hatred which in the best of relationships is absent and impossible to call up at a moment's notice. But the depth of feeling that was there may become less present, may be boxed up prettily in the recesses of memory but it never fully departs. Those that I have loved, on any level, I cannot leave behind in my mind - I still think about them, still wonder about their lives. My little brad, my mr. x, my chindy' begay, my dingbat. Even writing this I am overcome by a sense of loss at what could have been. I don't believe that I could lead a happy and perfect life with these men, I don't regret the choices I made or that were made for me - I regret the loss of a closeness with someone who I connected with in some small, real way if only fleetingly. That is the understanding that distance has given me. Not of what love is or was or could be, not even of what our relationships were, just of what it is that I miss and why.