Oceans can't stop my long-distance love Story and photos by RACHEL MARUSAK There’s an ocean between us – “long distance relationship” is an understatement. My boyfriend, Romain, is French, but lives just outside the border in Basel, Switzerland. So, when I run into any really open-minded-French-basher, I can save my breath and tell my patriotic countryman not to worry about it: technically, my boyfriend is neutral. October 28 was our two-year anniversary and we have spent the last year and a half counting down days between sacred, anticipated trips. It’s weird how segmented this relationship has made my life. Even though the actual time we spend together adds up to barely three months a year, “real life” begins and ends with our visits. This August I took a month off work (I am an intern, these things can be arranged) and spent a month with ‘mon amour’ in the old country. As usual, for the oh-so-worth-it savings of $100, my travel time was considerable: three flights and a train ride, totaling 24 hours. Newark to Detroit. Detroit to Amsterdam. Amsterdam to Paris. Paris, TGV (le Train à Grande Vitesse or the really fast train in France) to Toulon. Arriving in Charles de Gaulle airport is always a particular moment for me. It’s entering into another world. With its massive dome shape and wall-to-wall windows, the architecture always reminds me of what people in the 1980’s thought was futuristic. Everything is slightly but significantly different. Voices are hushed. Intoxicating perfumes waft through the corridors. Airport strangers instinctively and effortlessly avoid eye contact. Breathing the air of anonymity I move discreetly through the crowd, and make my way to the TGV station. After a three-month sabbatical, the last six-hour stretch passes like infinity. Nervous, excited and anxious, I push through the automatic train doors and sit down in the first open seat to read and sleep away the wait. Two stops later, a woman, with three teenage daughters crowding in the aisle, rouses me from my jet-lagged half-sleep and politely asks me if I’m in the wrong seat. I fumble for my ticket to verify (only for appearances as I hadn’t looked at my ticket in the first place) and apologize sincerely in my English-laden French – which, try as I might, is always three to four notches louder than everyone else – that I am actually in the wrong car altogether. With purse, shoulder bag and book in hand, yanking down my stuffed suitcase is far from a graceful effort, and I decide it is best left safely jammed overhead while I check out the dining car. I order a Heineken to calm my nerves and sidle up to an open counter space and stare at the zooming countryside. Proudly, I listen in on the various conversations around me. Even if my accent elicits stares or smug disapproving headshakes, at least I can fluently eavesdrop. After a while, I notice a rather tall, 20-something girl in conversation distance from me and I can’t stop myself – I introduce myself in the hopes of whiling away the last of the trip warming up my French. Like so many Europeans, Aude speaks English beautifully, but she politely humors me while I plow through her language like a colonist clearing the rain forest. I begin telling her my canned love story synopsis when – déjà vu. Mounting embarrassment steadily moves up into my cheeks. A couple of innocent minutes of conversation, simplified in fourth grade French, and a babysitter’s smile comes across Aude’s face. I can tell, she reads my vulnerability. Why does it seem like Europeans can cut the stranger façade to the quick and see right through to your intimate, naked truth? We are more transparent than we think. French people aren’t rude; they just don’t make friends with the person next to them in the dining car simply to distract themselves from thinking about their personal issues and insecurities. I am scared. As the train ticks through the stops, getting closer and closer to Romain, my fear amplifies. In these last few moments, I am suspended between my two lives. I look down and see my majority life, which is pretty great, become grayscale compared to being hand in hand with Romain. Nothing in life is certain, and the little girl inside of me who hung on to Santa much longer than the other kids screams. She pleads that I won’t fall for it again. This relationship is far too far away and fantastic to be real. This gift will be violently taken away from me as generously as it was given. I was always supposed to be alone. My counselor used to use the blanket-term “partner” when speaking of my future mate, just in case my lifelong singledom was a question of sexuality. But there I was, suddenly crazily in love, dangerously bordering dependent, and admittedly attached for the first time in my life. Even worse, I had just traversed the sea that, conveniently, protects me ruining everything. Even being thousands of miles away from the man I love, from the man who loves me, this “in love” thing is an unbelievable force. And now that I have it – now that I believe in it – I don’t want to lose it. I wonder, looking up at cultured, literary Aude, if these are the last moments I will spend on my in-between bridge. Will this be my last trip to real life? My little voice tells me to err on the cautious side, and I ask Aude for her contact information. The renaissance dining car man announces our arrival in Toulon as the train slows to a jerking stop. As I walk out onto the platform with my new friend (in the American sense of the word), I realize that every time I get out of a train, subway, or plane to meet Romain, I always come out with a stand-in by my side. Aude knew it. She knew I needed a person next to me in case my life was revealed to be over at the station. He’s not there. He’s not. “Il n’est pas ici,” I tell her. She’s not ruffled. I am. All the people I still know in the south of France race through my head; my host family, my language partner, the director of my school – strike that, I still owe her housing money – I’m screwed. And then, khakis, the same black dress shoes, his grandfather’s cashmere sweater, (over-the-shoulder-style), white-collared button down shirt – untucked: Romain. Smiling. Nervous, too. I love him. I do. I do. I do. I can’t help it. Mmmm. I smell him. He’s here. He exists. I love him. I set down my suitcase. It falls. Hand in hand, we are both trembling as we walk into the streets of Toulon, heading for the port. It’s late, but there are lots of people out, and the town’s energy feels celebratory. Romain tells me it’s un jour ferié, a holiday. It turned out to be Assumption, Aug. 15. I looked back at the station, realizing I forgot to say goodbye to Aude. She’s gone.