I love you across the ocean: Long distance couples at UTSC

Being in love means allowing parts of yourself to change and grow so that you can show up better for the other person.

“Our love feels like La La Land,” she says. ”If it had a happy ending. We are in our own little world. It is colourful.” (Illustration By: Hannah Arabella Gabling // The Underground).

** The Underground granted anonymity to the couple to respect their privacy. Due deligence was carried out to ensure the interviews were accurate and truthful

“I was tired and ended up sleeping that night.”

 Did you regret it? I asked.

“Yes I did.” she says frankly.

They went out for karaoke that night, planned to stay up all night talking, and watching a movie. But the night turned out different. This is how their last night together before six months apart ended. In a still way, the human surrender of sleep. 

They met through a mutual friend, both students at the University of Toronto, different campuses UTSC and UTM, together now for just over two years. When asked what it feels to love her, “It dignifies a lot of my hope in humanity,” he says. Through her, he has found what human relationships can mean — vulnerability, openness, boldness and courage. “She makes me want to be mature and bold.” 

Her answer is simple, yet sure. “It’s nice and warm,” she says with a soft giggle. “It makes me happy.” She has no need to perform love, in that moment, she is living in it. 

Being in love means allowing parts of yourself to change and grow so that you can show up better for the other person. For the couple they are not the same people they were before being together, at least not completely. 

They are sitting across the room from each other and everytime I ask a question they look for each other with their eyes, holding hands without touching. “ I have matured being with him, he challenges me. I’ve never been expressive of my feelings or been good with confrontation. But he encouraged me to be more open.” 

Then came the distance. More than one could count on their fingers, thousands of miles and an ocean apart.

She had to move back to Tanzania, to be closer to her family while exploring the opportunities present for her. December holidays are big and spending it with family meant a great deal to her. She ended up staying for 6 months, working at her parents' company.

“Sometimes you just need a hug and a kiss.” She found herself thinking across the ocean. He remained, learning himself  without her nearby. He prayed for her. They played video games and trivia online, carving out space for laughter, one of the best parts of their relationship. They laugh a lot.

But it was the smallest things that got him. “Strange things,” he said quietly. “Like her smell.”

When you do not see your favourite person everyday, you might be forced to confront a silent loneliness which opens up a way for solitude. After a while of sharing yourself with another person you get so consumed with trying to be for each other. Now that they were apart, they both found a way back to themselves, not because they had lost themselves but because every part of them had now become part of the other.

Who do you become when you love someone you cannot touch? Intimacy is a breathing entity of love. Stepping away from that encouraged him to explore friendship which in itself is a different kind of love. She is happy that he now has other people around him that love and care for him — a chosen family. He noted that she became more content with herself. “She has become someone who is less fixated on the social pressures of this generation.”

Time felt very slow. “There were days we did not talk. I struggled with trust in the past, learning to believe her at her word.” Distance has a way of complicating communication, leaving space for assumptions and they both had to grow; she into communication and he into trust.

Making the choice to believe each other across and despite the silence.

Slowly six months came apart to an end and they saw each other again. It felt like an eternity and more, something they were both waiting to see on the other side. He had been anticipating her flight back, cleaning her house,making space ready for the one he loves. The kind of thing you do when you love someone and have no other way to show it. The little things.  

Walking back into each other's arms felt familiar, the presence was still the same. “I felt so shy,” she says. “ Like I was meeting him for the first time.”

He noticed something new in her, a freshness that still felt like home. “I remember thinking she felt smaller,” he says softly. “But it felt like I had just seen her the day before.”

“Our love feels like La La Land,” she says. ”If it had a happy ending. We are in our own little world. It is colourful” 

He thinks for a moment. “Cheaper by the Dozen.” Not for the chaos of it, but for what it quietly speaks. Love never has ti grand nor loud. And perhaps true happiness and deep connection lives in the small things.

It is how they exist in a room together, one glimpse and you would know they belong to each other. 

I believed them both.