Through a friend, he approached me, and we got talking. Gradually, I fell in love with him, and considering that he already did at first sight, and I was the one delaying the ship to sail, the feelings I developed felt perfect as there was no time to waste.
I was in school, and I was combining learning a handiwork plus owning a small business at the time, so it was a busy time for me, but what do they say about someone you like? You find time amidst your busy schedules. You free time to talk to them because if you wait until you are free, you may end up exhausted in bed and fail to reach out to them again.
He was also a student of another institution far from mine. So, the only means of communication we had was through the phone. Communication, being an important string that holds a long-distance relationship in place, I was not ready to not give my all, and so I did.
Unfortunately, my man had another plan. While I was freeing my time to make sure we talked every day, he preferred going days not talking to me because “he was busy”. At least, that was the excuse he used to give.
I remember calling him several times, and all I keep getting was, “Babe, I’ll call you back, I’m currently handling a tutorial for some people. And other times, it would be that he was with a lecturer”, and he would never call back until about four to five days later. At some point, I had to just keep texting and stopped calling with the fear of not disrupting his day. So, I waited.
I waited for his calls, and texts but got none. And, the one time I decided to get really mad at him for not being far from him and still thinking I should be fine without hearing from him daily, I got a call from his mum, pleading with me not to break up with his son because he doesn’t call as much as I expected.
I calmed my nerves, but I decided to not try to call again, but waited to see how long it would take him to realize that he had a girlfriend. Well, it took him 30 days to realize it. I counted the days up to 30, and then I wrote my epistle of breakup because I already lost interest. The butterflies in my belly were already dead after series of excuses and multiple chances for him to redeem himself.
I wrote the epistle, sent to him via WhatsApp, and almost immediately, I got a call from him. “So, you were online, but failed to reach out to me” was the first sentence I said to him.
Two years later, I came to learn that I broke up with him because I had someone else I was seeing. In fact, these are the people that were my friends before he met me.
Long distance relationship is not supposed to be that complicated as long as the communication is in place. And not just communicating about how your day went, but your feelings, your struggles, your happiness, practically everything. But I think a lot of us are not wired to be away from the people we love, because sometimes, all we need is just a hug that reminds us of our safe space.
This is my entry to InLeo prompt for the month of February. You can find the details here
Images are from MetaAI.