Breakin' Up is Hard to Do

Breaking up from a long-distance relationship is weird. I mean, in a lot of ways, your day-to-day life doesn't really change much. Certainly you're on the phone less, and you're no longer spending hours trolling airline discount sites for cheap plane tickets. But, really, you've already been going to bed alone at night and waking up alone in the morning, anyway. You've gotten used to hanging out with your friends on the weekend instead of your boyfriend. Your house really doesn't have that much of his stuff in it. And on a day-to-day basis, your time was mostly your own. So in some ways, it's much easier than breaking up with someone local. Whose stuff had mixed and mingled with your own to the point that you were no longer even sure what belonged to whom. Whose going left this sudden, huge gap in your daily routine.

But in one way, a long-distance break-up feels more difficult, because your brain plays a nasty little trick on you: you forget that you've broken up. You're just going through your day like you did throughout the whole relationship, and then you catch yourself thinking about when you'll be able to squeeze in a visit to his town. And suddenly it hits you: there isn't a plane trip to see him in your future. You won't ever wake up next to him again. And once you're reminded, it's like you have to mentally go through the whole damn breakup all over again. You go days without crying and then you're reduced to tears because suddenly, you've remembered, and it sucks.