Distance

JD has been back from New Hampshire for a week now. Gotta say, I'm totally pleased with this. I missed him a lot this summer-- even with him coming back every weekend, I missed him. A lot. it was almost ridiculous, and made me question my tough independent self-sufficient street cred. Buuut, then I realized the street cred never existed except in my own mind, so I got over over.

But distance was hard. I spent most of my summer evenings alone in my apartment, on line, in books, or watching TV. Most nights, I talked to him on aim while we did whatever in our own spaces. It was excellent talking to him every day, but its even more excellent talking to him in person every day, seeing his face, hearing his voice, and feeling his skin.

I have never missed anyone the way I missed him, especially over such short periods of time. Being with him enables me to be more completely me, totally myself. Calm, safe, happy-- and a bit of a spaz. I think we really bring out the best in each other. The distance was hard.

And it made me think more about distance in general-- distance in relationships, friendships, families. I will probably not ever have to be distant from JD for long periods of time, but I am physically distant from my family and many of my friends. It's hard to maintain close relationships from a distance-- easy to maintain them with my family, sure, but so much harder with friends. I miss my friends from college, but I'm bad at keeping in touch-- I don't reach out as much as I should, and I don't hear a lot from a lot of friends. Maybe they're just like me, bad at keeping in touch-- or maybe they don't care to keep in touch. You never know-- just as you never know even when you see them every day, whether people really like you, or whether its all just a matter of convenience. Distance makes it easy to cut out the people you don't like, and hard to keep in contact with the ones you do-- I talk to only one of my college friends on a daily basis. I try to send emails to the other ones, and occasionally IM the ones that are online, but I'm honestly just so lame about it all, that it doesn't surprise me when they don't respond.

In less than a year, I'll have physical distance from yet another group of friends. Hopefully this time I'll be a little better at staying in touch-- or hell, even get back in touch with college friends-- roommates and sorority sisters who I used to talk to constantly.

But still, the question lingers-- is it distance that makes maintaining the friendships hard, or am I simply a bad friend?