The Road and I

Driving back and forth between my hometown and the town where my campus is located is something I’ve been doing for the past 5 years. Be it every other weekend or a few weekends in a row it’s tiring all the same. I have a love/hate relationship with this hour-and-a-half drive. I don’t like it because it’s usually the beginning of a 3-day stay at home which, in all honesty, is nothing short of a chore. However, I love having that time to just forget about the world and just be in my own little thought (and very often singing and dancing!) bubble. Not having a care (other than the obvious driving ones) is an amazing feeling, even if just for 90 minutes.

 

The road and I have had our share of great times, like the time when some cutie and I would exchange flirtatious winks and smiles from car to car between the towns of Ponce and Yauco, or the time when I was singing at the top of my lungs to The Pussycat Dolls and got weird looks from a school bus! We’ve also had our share of less than good times such as crying sessions, speeding tickets, a flat tire and horribly dangerous weather.

 

We’ve been together through thick and thin, and even though both of us have changed in great and many ways, we still stay the same to one another.

Closer through Distance

I’m a bad haircut and a wardrobe change away from being a Philosophy mayor, I swear.

       Yesterday I kind of bumped heads with my best boy friend (not boyfriend, as half the island may think) Benjamin and we ended up not talking all day. Being the stupid thing that it was, we met up as if nothing had happened and talked about the whole thing for a total of 15 seconds, and just like that the disturbance in the force was gone. After saying how much we didn’t miss each other (yes, I know, 24 hours apart, it’s an unhealthy thing) something like the following took place:

 

Benji: “Maybe we did need the time apart…”

Me:  “Why do you say that?”

Benji: “Maybe being apart gave us room to miss each other and moved us to be okay again.”

Me: “Well, yeah.”

Benji:  “See? Having you the weekend here instead of out of town had us together too much. Maybe we got sick of each other’s company.”

 

       That last sentence couldn’t be truer. As much as we may love each other we do get sick off each other’s company every once in a while. It doesn’t only happen with friends you’re really close with, it happens with family, classmates, and I would dare say it happens in serious relationships too. We really do need time for ourselves. We need the time to do what we must do in order to keep our sanity. We need time to just be.

       The same thing is happening with my “wife” Ivy! I rarely get sick of her. We sometimes do get on each other’s nerves after spending too much time together and we take a few days off and everything is good again. After having her here for so long and being used to having her around all the time I’m missing her so terribly much! She’s away in California having a great time with her brother, sister-in-law and adorable nephew. Having her not be here for almost two weeks now only makes me long for her to be here more. Once she gets back it will be like she was never away, and I’m sure we’ll get sick of each other in a few days’ time only to miss each other not long after.

       As much as we love to have the people we love around us it is definitely important to have our own time. Even if it’s to just collapse on a bed and stare at the ceiling looking for patterns in the cracks that aren’t really there, or sit down to listen to a CD you haven’t had the time to properly listen to, or maybe play that single-player videogame you don’t play when they’re around so you don’t make them feel left out, or read that book that you’ve been dying to finish…dropping hints much, right?  ^_~

       So, I can’t help but wonder…is distance crucial to make an up-close-and-personal relationship succeed?

Freedom in Disguise

       Summertime is usually a time to relax, have fun in the sun, wake up no sooner than 10am, catch up with all the projects and activities you weren’t able to do due to the lack of time to get around to them and just enjoy yourself. Well, not here in the mountains. Nope. Not. At. All.

       See, I live way up in the mountains of Puerto Rico in a town called Adjuntas. There are only about 20,000 inhabitants, one Burger King (only fast food restaurant), no shopping centers, not a single decent video store and no traffic lights in sight. Yes, you read it right. No traffic lights whatsoever. For the people living in Adjuntas the only way to entertain themselves is by going down to Ponce, the nearest city (also referred to as “the nearest establishment of civilization” by yours truly), which is a 15-20 minute drive. Not so bad if you think about it, but with gas prices up to 99.7 cents per liter it’s become difficult for someone like me, being a college student and all. Most of my friends are spending their summer out of the island, others are doing their thing on the opposite coast, and the ones who are in town are…Lisa. Just one friend in town, and she doesn’t come down from her house much (yes, she does live up higher than I do). What does that equal to? Me being stuck up high in the mountains doing nothing but read novels, listen to my mom bitch and moan about everything I do (and don’t do) and watch bad TV. After a week, all of it gets really old. Did I mention it’s been raining on a daily basis for hours on end? Hmm.

       It’s only been two weeks worth of the above mentioned, and I’m going insane. Which is why during this summer, just like pretty much every summer before, I’ll be taking summer classes! This is my freedom in disguise. I’d rather take classes during the summer than be stuck here for two months. I did it once, and for my own well being (and my mother’s) I can say it will never happen again. Ever.

       So, here I am counting the hours away until the gateway to heaven (Mayagüez in this case) opens up and I am able to drive to the hot hell that is Mayagüez. I have a very strong love/hate relationship with the town my campus is, in case you haven’t noticed.

Just twelve more hours. Just twelve more hours…