The Hardship of LDRs

Next week will mark ten months that I've been criss-crossing the country every few weeks for a boy. It'll mark ten months I've been making late-night phone calls, and Sunday morning phone calls, and phone calls that last for hours even though I hate phone calls, and it'll mark ten months I've been slowly merging my life with someone who lives 1500 miles away.

We used to keep count how many visits we've made to each other's city, but now we've lost track of the total. When round-trip tickets got as low as $78 between Chicago and New York right after the holidays, we booked flights through the end of March and have been seeing one another every other weekend since. Now when I go to New York, it feels less like a foreign city to me and more like a second home. And when I leave, when I come back to Chicago, when I say to NYMan, "See you in 12 days" or "three weeks," or whatever the case may be, I'm already thinking ahead to that moment--past the long commutes to work and the solo dinners in my apartment and the drinks and get-togethers with my friends where it always seems now like someone is missing, and I'm thinking about when we'll be together again, when it'll really feel like I'm home.

When I tell people my boyfriend lives in New York, I inevitably get some response about a long-distance relationship that either survived or failed, followed by a commiserating remark about how hard the ldr's are. And it's true--they are hard. The commute alone always wipes me out... and the seemingly endless carting around of our belongings from one city to another, and negotiating what often seems like two lives now: the single life and the coupled one.

As soon as my bus pulled away from the Port Authority in Manhattan on Sunday afternoon, taking me to the airport and back home to Chicago, from my coupled life back to my single one, everything started going wrong, like some meta-metaphor for the transition between these two existences. First, as I reached for my bag to dial one last good-bye to NYM, I realized I didn't have my cell with me and plain as day, I suddenly pictured it sitting on his coffee table in his livingroom right where I'd left it 45 minutes earlier. Then at Newark airport, where I'd never been before, I had to stand in a security line for nearly an hour while I sweated making it to my gate in time to catch my plane. But it turned out my flight was delayed an hour and while I would normally use that time to catch up on phone calls I'd ignored during the weekend, this time I didn't have my phone with me and I was reduced to reading the backs of people's newspapers because I'd already finished the book I'd brought along and was too cheap to buy a magazine.

Later, when our pilot made up time in the air and we landed at O'Hare only 20 minutes behind schedule, I breathed a sigh of relief, content that I'd make it home in time to catch the opening montage of the Oscars, and maybe even some of Barbara Walter's special before hand, which I didn't imagine could be any worse than Oprah special last week where Julia Roberts reminded me why I stopped watching romantic comedies.

But then, just was I was congratulating myself on such a positive attitude after an tiring commute and the loss of my phone and all, the pilot announced that due to weather problems or some bullshit, there was a plane sitting in our arrival gate that had to be de-iced before we could exit and it would be a minimum of 30 minutes. Why no one could roll out some stairs and bus us to the terminal, I really don't know. Maybe all the bus drivers were home watching the Oscars like I should have been.

Thirty minutes turned into an hour and my positive attitide crumbled like a Parisian pastry with each ticking second. Finally, finally, nearly 6 hours after I left NYMan's apartment, and 4 and a half hours after arriving at Newark, I was able to exit the plane at O'hare, where I spent five more minutes weighing the pros and cons of cabbing it home versus taking public transportation. In the end, economics won out over convenience and I found myself on a tumbling train towards the bus terminal. What should have been another 45 minute commute home from there, turned into a hellish 2 hours as I realized my bus had stopped running for the day even though it was only 8 PM and I travel one of the busiest routes in a city of 3 million. Also startling considering the size of Chicago, there was not a single cab available in the entire fucking city and I know this because when I started screaming into the evening air, Taxi, please!! I need a goddamn taxi!, I was met with nothing more than the sound of my own voice echoing off abandoned buldings and alleyways like canyons in the west.

Did I mention it was snowing?

And that I didn't have my phone?

And that THERE WERE NO TAXIS ANYWHERE AT ALL?!

Even after walking to the next busiest intersection, through a tunnel with no sidewalks, where I literally had to run for my life, dodging not only oncoming traffic, but some dude who insisted on trailing me, his feet falling creepily in step to mine just inches behind, I still couldn't spot a taxi to save my fucking life (almost literally, it seems!). I wracked my brain trying to find a solution, to figure out some way to get home safely to my cats, a beer, and my warm, cozy bed. And then I remembered: payphones!! People used to use payphones back in the olden days when we didn't have our cells implanted in our palms! Why, I'd just find a payphone and call a friend to come pick my ass up and everything would be fine! Except, two things: I didn't have anyone's phone numbers because they were all stored in my cell sitting on NYMan's coffee table, and who bothers to memorize phone numbers anymore, and also! Apparently, payphones no longer exist.

But, alas, a Walgreens beckoned from the corner not too far away and surely there must be a phone in there, right? So I ran to Walgreens, pulling my luggage behind me through the slush and the snow and ice and I made it to the door just as an employee was locking up.

"Please!" I moaned breahtlessly, "Phone! Please! Phone! Must call help!"

"Uh, hello," the woman said, looking at me like I was a crazy person.

"Can I please use your phone before you close? Please?"

"Okay, sure, " she replied, taking pity on me.

I'd like to say the story ended there, that I called a cab and it came in 2 seconds and carted me home and all was well and good in the world again, but that's not what happened. It took three calls and many minutes on hold before I was told it'd be 40 minutes before a cab could come get me, and while I stood outside in the cold waiting for my chariot, cursing the gods of transporation and my sudden streak of horrible luck for all that had happened since leaving Manhattan, it dawned on me: this string of seemingly unrelated unpleasant events since leaving the comfort of my boyfriend's city and the fabulous weekend we spent together-- it wasn't just a coincidence-- the universe was sending a message to me about my life and I was getting it loud and clear:

Next time, he makes the commute.