When I was just fourteen years old I started dating this guy who lived over one thousand miles away. I met him at a Taekwondo tournament and the connection was instantaneous. I cared for him more than I have ever cared about almost anyone. I told him everything. I made him my world. After a few months he gave me some excuse and broke up with me. Ignored all my calls. All my texts. He vanished from my life, and I cried every day for weeks.
Later that year I met Tyler. Tyler lives in California, and I live in Colorado. We had a mutual friend in the Taekwondo world, which is how we started talking. At first, he was not interested at all. We were both talking to other people. But I was persistent. I basically forced him to talk to me. We developed a friendship, and soon fell for each other. Though we’d never met.
We talked every day for several months. After a while he started asking me questions… “What is this? What are we? Where is this going?” Because of my prior experience with long distance, I refused to make any commitment. When I turned fifteen that year, in October, he mailed me a CD and bracelet he’d made, a necklace, and a letter. I remember sitting on my floor, reading the letter, and having to stop every few seconds to wipe away tears. As I held the letter in my hands, I knew I could trust him. That he wouldn’t do what the last boy had done to me.
His birthday was two months later, in December. I made a little book out of paper, and wrote in it everything we’d been through and what our journey had been like for those months we’d been talking. On the last page I wrote, “I’m ready now. Will you be my boyfriend?” He called me as soon as he read it. He was crying. And on that day, 12/1/08, we became an official couple. 1200 miles apart.
We met two and a half months later. And have seen each other almost a dozen times since. We’ve been together for over two and a half years. We talk every single day, for hours a day. He is my best friend. He knows me better than anyone. We’ve had our fights. But he has never given up on me. Of course it’s hard being apart, going as long as 8 months without seeing each other, but it’s made our communication that much better. And we appreciate the time we do have together that much more.
Things are about to get even more amazing - next month I’m moving to California for college. And that means we’ll be face to face again… and we will be much more often. <3