The Long-Distance of It All

Long distance is a funny phrase. People hear it and think kilometres, time zones, airports. I’ve learned it’s not that literal. Sometimes the longest distance in the world is sitting across from someone who thinks they know you. Sometimes it’s the space between a message sent and a message ignored. Sometimes it’s the silence someone uses like a leash.

I never signed up for a long-distance anything. I don’t have the patience for digital romance or the stamina for emotional hide-and-seek. I like things real, in front of me, where I can see the truth without needing to decode it. But then came Subject M42 — a man who managed to be both too close and too far at the same time.

He arrived like a colourful train wreck, all intensity and charm and the kind of attention that makes you forget to check the brakes. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and for a moment I mistook the flicker for a flame. I promised myself I wouldn’t turn him into a story. I promised I’d see the man, not the metaphor. But that’s exactly where the story began.

Because when I finally looked at him — really looked — I didn’t like what I saw. And once you see something clearly, you can’t unsee it. Not even if you want to.

He left for FIFO, and I stayed behind. That’s when the distance stopped being romantic and started being revealing. The silence wasn’t peaceful; it was strategic. The coldness wasn’t confusion; it was control. Every message felt like a move on a checkerboard, and I realised I wasn’t playing to win. I was playing to leave.

I had made promises — not to him, but to myself. Don’t run. Don’t end things in a text. Don’t turn this into another story. Easy promises when you think lust might turn into love. Impossible promises when the cracks start spreading faster than the paint on your bedroom wall.

Two weeks. That’s all it took for the madness to show. Two weeks for the hot-and-cold, the name-calling, the emotional whiplash. Two weeks for me to realise that the only long-distance relationship I was in… was with myself. I had drifted so far from my own peace that I didn’t recognise the version of me trying to keep up with his chaos.

So I stopped.

Stopped reacting.

Stopped explaining.

Stopped performing the role he thought I should play.

And in the quiet that followed, I found something I hadn’t expected:

I wasn’t sad.

I wasn’t heartbroken.

I wasn’t even disappointed.

I was done.

Not dramatically.

Not angrily.

Just… done.

And that’s the thing about distance — once you’ve crossed it, you don’t go back.

I didn’t notice the moment I started losing myself. It never happens in one clean cut. It’s more like erosion — slow, quiet, almost polite at first. A little compromise here, a little silence there. A skipped gym session. A cancelled walk. A drink I didn’t want but didn’t argue about. A flare I pretended wasn’t happening because I didn’t want to explain CRPS to someone who already struggled to understand basic emotional cues.

Stress is a strange creature when you live with chronic pain. It doesn’t just sit in your mind; it settles in your bones. It lights up nerves that should be quiet. It turns small things into sparks and big things into wildfires. And being with him — even in that short month — felt like living inside a storm system I didn’t sign up for.

He liked me better drunk.

Not messy drunk — just softened, blurred, easier.

I hadn’t drunk that often or that heavily in years. Not because I’m a saint, but because I learned the hard way that alcohol and CRPS are a bad marriage. But he had a way of making sobriety feel like an inconvenience. Like my clarity was a problem he needed to solve.

And I let it happen.

That’s the part that stings.

Not because I’m weak, but because I was tired.

Tired of pain.

Tired of loss.

Tired of being the strong one.

Tired of navigating a body that doesn’t always obey me.

Tired of a life that has demanded more resilience than anyone should have to muster.

So when he offered attention — even inconsistent, confusing, conditional attention — I took it. Not because I believed in him, but because I wanted a break from being alone in my own head.

But the thing about breaks is they end.

And when they do, you’re left with the bill.

His insecurities were loud.

Louder than my pain.

Louder than my needs.

Louder than the truth.

He could turn intimacy into an apology and an apology into a performance. He could flirt with another woman because I “rudely” went to the toilet, then act wounded when I didn’t swallow the blame whole. He could turn a simple boundary into a personal attack. He could turn silence into punishment and then call it “space.”

And I — in some twisted act of compassion — kept trying to understand him.

Kept trying to be patient.

Kept trying to be the bigger person.

Kept trying to be the calm one in the chaos.

But somewhere in that month — somewhere between the FIFO shifts and the cold shoulders and the poetic messages followed by silence — I froze. Not physically, though the pain flares didn’t help. I froze in that deeper way, the way that makes you feel like a fly caught in a web spun by a spider that isn’t even hungry. A trap built out of boredom, not malice. A place where you’re not devoured — just forgotten.

He made me feel redundant.

And that’s when I realised I had drifted so far from myself that I couldn’t even see the shoreline.

I wasn’t living.

I wasn’t growing.

I wasn’t even coping.

I was surviving someone who wasn’t worth surviving.

And that’s the thing about losing yourself — once you notice it, you can’t un-notice it.

You can’t pretend the mirror is lying.

You can’t pretend the silence is peaceful.

You can’t pretend the distance is romantic.

You can only walk back to yourself, one honest step at a time.

The moment I decided to leave wasn’t cinematic.

There was no dramatic fight, no slammed door, no epiphany delivered by the universe. It was quieter than that — almost insultingly quiet. It happened in the middle of a conversation that wasn’t even a conversation, just another loop of him talking in circles and me trying to find the thread of logic he kept dropping.

He was explaining — or pretending to explain — why he’d ignored me for a full day. Something about being “too busy keeping the peace,” as if silence was a noble act. As if withholding communication was a form of emotional labour I should be grateful for. He said he had “reservations,” but when I asked him to use his words instead of his mood swings, he pivoted so fast he nearly tripped over his own excuses.

And that was it.

Not the words — the pivot.

The way he could rewrite the narrative mid-sentence.

The way he could turn a question into an accusation.

The way he could make me feel like the unreasonable one for wanting clarity.

It wasn’t anger that hit me.

It wasn’t sadness.

It was recognition.

I’d seen this before.

Not in lovers — in life.

In people who used confusion as currency.

In people who made you doubt your own footing so they could feel taller.

In people who mistook your softness for surrender.

And I realised, with a kind of calm that felt almost clinical, that I was done.

Not because he’d hurt me — he hadn’t earned that depth.

Not because I hated him — I didn’t care enough to hate him.

But because I could feel myself disappearing.

I could feel the version of me who loved the gym, who walked outside just to feel the air, who wrote stories because they made her feel alive — I could feel her slipping.

Not dramatically.

Not tragically.

Just… fading.

And I’ve lost enough in my life.

I wasn’t going to lose myself too.

So I stopped trying.

Stopped explaining.

Stopped offering emotional CPR to someone who wasn’t dying — just bored.

I didn’t block him.

I didn’t announce my exit.

I didn’t perform closure for his benefit.

I simply stepped back into myself.

And the distance between us — the real distance — opened like a clean, quiet door.

He kept messaging, of course.

The supportive version of him.

The “proud of you” version.

The “my lady” version.

The version that only appears when he senses he’s losing the upper hand.

But I wasn’t there anymore.

Not emotionally.

Not mentally.

Not in any way that mattered.

I read his words the way you read a menu for a restaurant you’re not hungry for.

Polite interest.

No appetite.

And that’s when I understood something I should have known from the start:

Some people aren’t meant to be partners.

They’re meant to be chapters.

Short ones.

The kind you don’t dog-ear because you know you’ll never reread them.

He was a chapter.

A messy, colourful, exhausting chapter.

A chapter that taught me more about myself than about him.

Because the truth is, he wasn’t the villain.

He wasn’t the heartbreak.

He wasn’t even the lesson.

I was.

I was the one who stayed past the first red flag.

I was the one who softened my boundaries.

I was the one who tried to make sense of nonsense.

I was the one who let myself freeze.

And I was the one who thawed.

Leaving him wasn’t a decision.

It was a return.

A quiet, steady walk back to myself.

And once you return to yourself, you don’t go back.

Leaving someone doesn’t always look like leaving.

Sometimes it looks like breathing again.

Sometimes it looks like waking up without checking your phone.

Sometimes it looks like painting a wall alone because the silence is easier than the conversation you’d have to endure to get help.

The aftermath wasn’t dramatic.

It wasn’t even emotional.

It was… quiet.

A quiet I hadn’t realised I’d been craving.

There’s a strange kind of peace that comes after chaos — not the soft, romantic kind people write poems about, but the practical kind. The kind that lets you hear your own thoughts again. The kind that lets you feel your own body without bracing for the next emotional whiplash. The kind that reminds you that you exist outside someone else’s moods.

I didn’t miss him.

I missed myself.

And that’s when I understood the real distance in this story:

I had been long-distance from my own life.

From my routines.

From my body.

From my creativity.

From my peace.

He hadn’t stolen those things.

I had handed them over in small, tired pieces, thinking it was temporary. Thinking it was harmless. Thinking it was what people did when they were trying to build something.

But you can’t build anything on a foundation that shifts every time someone feels insecure.

So I started reclaiming myself in small, deliberate ways.

I went back to the gym — not to punish myself, but to remember what strength felt like.

I walked outside again — not far, just enough to feel the air on my skin.

I wrote — not for him, not for validation, but because the words had been waiting for me to come home.

And with every small act, I felt the distance closing.

Not between us — that distance was permanent.

Between me and myself.

I didn’t block him.

I didn’t need to.

He faded the way noise fades when you close a door.

He still messaged, of course.

Little hooks.

Little tests.

Little attempts to pull me back into the orbit he mistook for connection.

But I wasn’t orbiting anymore.

I was grounded.

I read his messages the way you read old receipts — mildly curious how they ended up in your pocket, but not invested enough to keep them.

He thought he was winning because I replied.

He didn’t realise that my replies were just echoes — polite, distant, empty of the energy he once fed on.

He didn’t realise that I wasn’t playing anymore.

I wasn’t even on the board.

And that’s the thing about people like him — they mistake your silence for surrender, not realising it’s actually your exit.

The truth is, he was never the story.

He was the catalyst.

The mirror.

The reminder.

The story was always me — the woman who walked herself back from the edge of losing herself, who chose clarity over chaos, who learned that distance isn’t measured in kilometres but in how far you drift from your own truth.

And once I found my way back, I didn’t look over my shoulder.

Some chapters end quietly.

Some endings don’t need closure.

Some people don’t deserve a final scene.

He became what he was always meant to be:

a paragraph.

A footnote.

A once-upon-a-time I won’t reread.

And me?

I became someone I recognise again.

Recognition didn’t arrive like a lightning strike.

It came the way reflections do on moving glass — there, then gone, then there again if the angle was right. A flicker of myself in a shop window as I walked past. A ghost of my own expression in the dark screen of my phone. A ripple of familiarity in the mirror when I wasn’t looking directly at it.

I didn’t see myself clearly.

I saw myself passing.

A suggestion of who I used to be.

A silhouette of the woman I remembered.

A shape I could almost touch if I didn’t look too hard.

It wasn’t dramatic.

It wasn’t even sad.

It was… blurred.

Blurred fear.

Blurred happiness.

Blurred instinct.

Blurred longing for something I couldn’t name at first.

I sat on that fence longer than I should have — one leg dangling in the fear of losing something, the other in the quiet hope of finding myself again. The problem wasn’t indecision. The problem was that my heart and my head were speaking two different dialects of the same truth.

My head said, This is wrong.

My heart said, This is not home.

But neither could agree on the exit.

The irony, of course, was that they wanted the same thing.

They weren’t fighting each other.

They were fighting the fog.

Because somewhere beneath the noise, beneath the flares, beneath the exhaustion and the emotional static, there was a single, steady truth pulsing like a heartbeat:

I want myself back.

Not the version of me he met — softened, blurred, tired.

Not the version of me trying to be patient with someone who mistook my kindness for compliance.

Not the version of me who froze because chaos felt familiar.

The real me.

The one who existed before the hot-and-cold.

Before the drinking.

Before the flares.

Before the silence used as punishment.

Before the confusion disguised as connection.

I didn’t leave him in one clean moment.

I left him in fragments.

A piece of me stepped away when he flirted with another woman because I “rudely” went to the toilet.

Another piece stepped away when he called me superficial for having needs.

Another when he ignored me for a day and called it “keeping the peace.”

Another when I realised I was drinking more in a month than I had in years.

Another when I felt the CRPS flare and pretended it was fine because explaining it felt like too much work.

Another when I caught my reflection in a window and didn’t recognise the woman looking back.

Leaving wasn’t a decision.

It was a slow remembering.

A gradual unblurring.

A quiet return.

A soft, steady reclaiming of the edges of myself.

And once the reflection sharpened — once I saw myself clearly, even for a moment — I knew the truth:

I wasn’t choosing between him and loneliness.

I was choosing between him and myself.

And I chose me.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

Not with fireworks or declarations.

Just with a quiet, steady step back into my own skin.

The distance between us didn’t widen.

I simply stopped crossing it.

Little by little, I saw myself again.

Not fully.

Not sharply.

But enough to know I was still there.

And that’s when I understood the truth I’d been circling:

I was the long-distance relationship that needed to come home.

Not him.

Not us.

Not whatever illusion I tried to build in those few chaotic weeks.

Me.

I had drifted so far from myself that I mistook the distance for loneliness.

I mistook the silence for connection.

I mistook the chaos for passion.

I mistook the exhaustion for effort.

Subject 42 wasn’t a love story.

He wasn’t even a heartbreak.

He was a lesson — a short, sharp reminder of what happens when you settle for crumbs while starving for your own presence.

He taught me nothing about love.

But he taught me everything about myself.

About what I won’t tolerate.

About what I won’t shrink for.

About what I won’t lose again.

And as the distance between us widened, the distance between me and myself finally began to close.

I didn’t run back.

I didn’t sprint.

I didn’t collapse into my own arms.

I walked.

Steady.

Quiet.

Certain.

Because the truth is simple:

Some relationships are meant to be saved.

Some are meant to be survived.

And some — like this one — are meant to remind you that the only person you ever needed to come home to was yourself.

And I’m finally on my way back.