Love made me leave behind a place right near my parents in Houston to join my partner in a town without a single restaurant. I'd first met my partner a decade earlier, but we'd reconnected more recently - while long-distance - over a shared love of stories, coffee, and baseball. From the beginning, it was clear that if we were to close the distance gap, it would be me who moved.
About 20 people were gathered, eating, drinking and chatting loudly. I was given a drink and a bowl of noodles, then shortly afterwards the director and showrunner asked me to read a scene with one of the actors, Adinia. She was so graceful and precise in her reading, I remember sitting across from this woman and being in complete awe of her.
My girlfriend and I are in a long-distance relationship. When we were living together, we would have sex maybe once every six to eight weeks, which was frequent for me and infrequent for her due to different sex drives. Now that we're apart, and I only see her once every couple of months, something she used to do sometimes is now something she does almost every time I see her.
My sister and I have always been close in the kind of way that only siblings with a two-year age gap can be. We grew up sharing everything from wardrobes to the same old hand-me-down phone. As adults, though, life has pulled us in different directions. She's 33 now, I'm 31, and somehow, we spent most of our twenties living in different countries.
I was 30, a British-South African expat living her best life in Zurich, when I was unexpectedly and entirely swept off my feet by a Swedish knight in shining armour. The day we met, I knew deep in my bones that my life was about to change forever. We spent an hourslong brunch together, followed by strolling the city with mutual friends he was visiting for the weekend from London.
Moving from Vancouver to Birmingham seemed economically wise, as rent and living expenses were significantly lower at first, making it appear that we could save money.
Being five hours away from my boyfriend is difficult, but we have a lot of things we do to make it work. For example, we always say 'good morning' and 'good night' - this may not seem important, but being able to start and end our day with the thought of each other helps us remember that we always have one another.