Missing out

It's been some 6 years now for me being away from home; while it's been rewarding in many regards, and I would absolutely not change it, it's been hard leaving people behind, or as I'm finding out now, reuniting with them, as they are not them anymore. And I don't mean this in a bad way, but simply that just as I made my life elsewhere and became someone else, so did they.

Now the most daunting prospect of moving once again is leaving a relationship behind and trying to keep it alive in long distance for a year. And I just realised that probably my biggest fear in this sense is simply that: missing out on her growth and evolution as a person and her missing out on mine, just not being there, becoming someone else. It is true that effective communication should go a long way, but even with my family I'm realising that even though I kept up to-date with most things, I still missed plenty of important moments: laughter, sadness, common struggle, dancing, face gestures, overall intrinsically sharing certain aspects of our view of life, etc. Then all the emotions that go with little things, that seemingly can only be shared by being alive there and then, together.

Then, for some reason my mind likes to play this futile game of filling up gaps, creating an artificial picture of things where I couldn't live through them; I suppose it's a way to create the illusion of understanding and empathy/connection with the other. This is mostly harmless to myself with family, but in the case of a special other it turns into a stinging feeling that can at times veer dangerously into insecurity and jealousy. On the other hand, how could you possibly accurately capture whatever is going on in your life, with all its richness (be it good or bad) without them living it there, locally in space-time, together with you?

I've been faced with the prospect of trying a long distance relationship before but at least in a couple there wasn't even a discussion, whereas with another we figure it would just not work and didn't deem it worth it. I feel like this time I approached things with much more naivety than I thought and that when people say it's hard they are implying many invisible but nevertheless pervasive hardships.

Fulfilment by Gustav Klimt