And counting...

17 more days. By the time I post this it will probably be 16. My boyfriend has already been in Afghanistan for almost five months, so two and a half weeks shouldn’t even register. But as the last countdown begins, it gets harder not to have him around. Seeing guys in uniform walk across campus now catches me off guard every time. I’m sure they wonder why the weirdo on the other side of the oval is squinting determinedly at them. Is she trying to turn them into someone else?

Yes, but it hasn’t happened just yet. She’s working on finding the magic words as we speak.

It didn’t feel like this in the beginning. The months stretched out forever. While I still missed him, nothing would change for some time. The only thing to do was forget about him for the summer and see if I still liked him when he got back. We hadn’t been dating long enough to make any promises, so it seemed like a good plan.

After it became evident that the phone conversations weren’t going to get any less frequent and the letters began to fill pages, the plan gave up. Then it was a matter of stamina. How long can we keep this up? Five months, apparently. All the while it gets harder to hang up and go back to studying for a test that does not make the days go by any faster.

Now the end is in sight but just out of reach. Nervous excitement permeates my daily life; I’m almost expecting him to be sitting on my couch when I get back from class with an amused smile that clearly says, “surprise.”

Something that keeps floating around in my brain is the fact that we’ve gotten to know each other extremely well over the summer. We reached a level of trust much quicker that we would’ve if he’d stayed here. It all happened over the phone or in letters, though.

It’s interesting how much easier it is to be open when you can’t see the other person’s reaction. We’ve become so comfortable with each other in a long-distance relationship, I cannot help but wonder how that will translate once he is a physical presence in my life again. We’re almost different people in our writing and over the phone, how much work will it take to reconnect the face with the words?

Ideally, we have waited too long to see each other again to let it be a barrier for more than a few hours. Realistically, though, it may take weeks, maybe months, to regain a comfort level with someone I’m used to being gone.

I’ll have to wait 16 more days to find out.