Love happens.
Even to Starving Artists.
...Frankly, sometimes, I feel like we feel it huger than most. (This is just my personal opinion, but I feel like it's pretty valid.)
But here's the deal with Starving Artists in Love: it's tricky business. It can be.
I've very recently come to realize that a definite balance needs to be stricken between "This is my Professional Life" and "This is my Love Life" and that sometimes, you can't really master both at the same time.
...No, I guess that's not really right. I'll rephrase:
You can't really expand upon both at the same time. Most of the time.
I'm sure that this is a universal truth--I'm sure that it is. But, for us, for the Starving Artists, I feel as if it's particularly true.
And it is particularly difficult when BOTH parties in the relationship are Starving Artists.
And difficulter still:
When they live 1100 miles apart from one another.
Here. In. Lies. My. Conundrum.
...
My boyfriend and I have been doing this long distance-thing for over a year and a half now--successfully. Which in itself is a remarkable feat.
That is pretty exactly 1/3rd of the time that we've been dating.
For the prior 2/3rds: we were living together.
(Whoa.)
Happily.
(Whoa.)
Very.
(...Whoa.)
And coming to discover who our "professional selves" were alongside one another. Who we would be out in the real world, beyond grad school. What all of that meant.
Thus far, this has meant that I've been running around attempting to grow/expand/make my living as an actor in New York, and he's been running around attempting to grow/expand/make his living as an actor/teacher/director...in Kansas City.
...That's far.
WHY ARE WE SO FAR APART?!?!?!
Truthfully, we both have our reasons. And we both have thoroughly valid ones. But in a nutshell, we both shared this aim of taking professional risks in the cities that our guts were telling us to stick to.
No regrets.
No "what if"s.
...Professionally speaking.
And we've stuck to that.
And clearly, we want to see each other all of the time--but as a Starving Artist, you're frequently trying to finagle visits with money that doesn't exist.
And occasionally time that doesn't exist (if you're in a show, or two...and/or just generally working like a dog).
Tricky.
So, we frequently go for long stretches of time without seeing much of each other beyond the scope of iChat. Because we just can't.
Shitty.
But we inherently knew that this was what we were signing up for. We did.
"We'll make a compromise whenever we need to make a compromise."
Right. ...Right?
"Right?..."
...Right....
And now here we are, a year and a half later ANTSY for a compromise...but we are now both on the brink of semi-kicking ass professionally. (AKA, neither one of us can do a thing. Presumably for awhile.)
It's thoroughly frustrating.
I was recently venting my frustrations out to my aunt who, over the past 8 years, has become my voice of reason.
I just want us to be in the same place, why can't we be in the same freaking place?!
"Honey, because this is what you chose to do. You both chose this."
It's dumb.
"I know."
I just to want to find the right words to make him just want to up and move here, I just want him here.
"I know..."
...Or maybe I'll just find the guts to go back there. Or something. I don't know...
"Ummm..."
It's been four and a half years, and it was so great, and it still is, and he's my best friend and I just feel like we haven't been progressing because of this distance-thing and I don't get it but I hate it. It's so dumb.
"Well..."
What?
"Is it the distance?"
...As opposed to...?
"Are you doing the professional things that you set out to do?"
Yes.
"Is he?"
Yes.
"Then, that's just where you are. That is the road that you both have to ride upon right now. Accept that your relationship is just kind of standing where it is--happily, it's actually a wonderful kind of dilemma--and that when the professional stuff mellows out for a bit, that's when you can put your Love and all of that other stuff in the forefront as your focus again."
...
...I want both.
"Angela, you can't have both. That's a practically impossible thing to achieve considering where you're both at, in your jobs and...where you both live."
Oh.
"You can both wait. For each other, you can do that."
I know.
"I know you do. Just one thing at a time, focus on one thing at a time."
...I'm bad at that.
"I'm aware."
And she's right. The fact is that she's totally right. And I had truthfully never considered that before--being the constant multi-tasker that I am--but it does make perfect sense.
It makes it that much easier to swallow considering that when I brought the conversation up to my boyfriend in a This is my new plan of attack-fashion (this past week...during his visit...which I'm about to get into...) his response was simply "Right."
Right?!
"You weren't doing that already?"
...No.
"Well that's just silly."
Oh.
(So, I'm apparently the last to know about this--I AM THE ALWAYS THE LAST ONE TO KNOW EVERYTHING!!...)
(...That's not true.)
So, I adopt this brilliant philosophy from my aunt as my own, and attempt to just keep going forward.
Right.
But then, he came for a visit last week--we were way way way overdue, it was so so so necessary and so so so great. He had a week before he started rehearsing a show, I was off from work, I had nothing else to distract me, we had no agenda...and there was a torrential downpour for pretty much the entire length of his visit, so we had NOTHING ELSE TO DO except for hang-out with one another.
Rare. For us, that is an insanely rare occurrence.
It was amazing.
I had my best friend/backbone finally by my side again, finally, and we didn't even have to do anything but all felt entirely absolutely wonderfully right with the world.
...And suddenly, four days had just evaporated, and it was dawn, and I was on a train taking him back to the airport, where he would leave me, with no concrete date in mind as to when we'd see each other again.
I was a disaster.
He was a disaster.
And I stood there in the middle of the Astoria Blvd-stop crying like a maniac.
I'm so proud of you for doing as well as you've been.
"I'm proud of you, too, Angie."
...And then I caved and asked a stupid question.
Wanna think about staying? Maybe?
"Honey, I can't."
Uggh, fiiiiiiiiiine. I know.
"Angie."
And he looks at me, mid-disaster-face.
"You're a strong girl."
...Maybe.
"Noooo, you are. Be strong for me, OK? We know we can do this."
OK.
"We won't always have to do this. Maybe we won't have to much longer. I'll get here, for you, soon enough." (That huge huge statement making me feel simultaneously thrilled and supremely horribly greedy.) "OK?"
OK.
And then, he was getting on a bus. And then, he was gone.
I'm aware. I am thoroughly 100% aware that I am living in the city that I am supposed to be living in and doing the things that I'm supposed to do. Right now. I am.
And for right now, he is, too.
And I know that I'm not a girl who wants much in this world. Truthfully. (To pay off my student loans before I'm 92. To actually for real have health insurance. ...A KitchenAid standing mixer. ...)
But.
I do want a life where I can thrive artistically--and I think I'm getting it, and so help me when I do, I'm keeping it.
But.
I also want a life that is overflowing with Love. And I want it within reach.
I want both. In tandem.
And soon.
Is that unreasonable?
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