Lost

We are lost in our relationship. We are swimming, swarming, swirling—trying to make sense of our relationship. Every time we feel as if we have a strong foothold, a balanced sense of gravity; something comes and knocks us off balance.

And that “something” (whatever it may be) always comes at inconvenient moments. That “something” comes when we least expect it, when things are going well, when we are on cloud nine. That “something” has a way of detecting joy and conveniently inserting itself in the weakest areas of our relationship.

That “something” for us is plane tickets and travel. It is essential to our long-distance relationship that we see each other at least once a month. If we go even a week beyond that, we start feeling it in our relationship. We start getting frustrated more easily and start getting snippier with each other. Well, this month when we went to buy our plane tickets, they were very expensive. And not regular-level expensive, but $600 expensive!

That expense was the “something” that broke the camels’ back. That “something” found its way into the weak parts of our relationship—money and distance.

From there, we were knocked to the ground, scrambling to get up. But we didn’t know which way was up.  We became frustrated with each other but we were really frustrated with the circumstances. We wanted to blame the world, but could only blame ourselves. 

So in an instance cloud nine became rock bottom. Walking on sunshine became living in the trenches. It wasn’t necessarily about the plane tickets, the tickets were just the catalyst. What we were really frustrated with was the fact that we are still living far apart from each other after, that neither one of us is willing to sacrifice our lives in our respective cities, and that neither one of us has the means to quit our jobs and move anywhere. 

So we are trying to find our footing again. Trying to make sense of our relationship, but it’s only a matter of time before “something” comes and knocks us back down…