Like Crazy

Jeremy is out for the evening so I've taken the opportunity to watch something he absolutely would not tolerate. It's a film called Like Crazy and it's about a British girl falling for an American boy and the long distance agony that ensued. It wasn't the best film, but one thing is for sure - whoever wrote it had done long distane, and it brought it all back:

• the ride on the tube to the airport, where every moment is an anguish and a longing and a holding back of tears
• the wait to say goodbye, where everything in you wants the goodbye to be over and everything in you wants to prolong it forever
• the ride home on the tube where the seat beside you is empty, or full of a stranger that is not him, and the holding back (or not) of tears
• the crying in public
• the knowledge that your friends absolutely 100% think you're insane
• the excruciating failure of pragmatism
• the awkward late night phone conversations, where one of you is exhausted and the other is cooking dinner / about to go out for the night
• the first re-meeting that you've imagined and longed for but then it's there and it's strange- this odd reuniting and careful remembering
• the joy of remembering and reuniting
• the ride on the tube to the airport...

Long Distance is a remembered trauma that flows through me. Even when I tell our story and people remark on how remarkable we are, I nod and smile and make light. But really I'm remembering and reliving and wondering at how it ever happened. We did it, we survived, but quite how I'll never know.