Distance was the first enemy.
Not the kind that storms in loudly, demanding attention, but the quiet kind that settles between two people like fog rolling over a city before dawn. At first, it doesn’t seem dangerous. It even looks beautiful from afar—romantic, poetic, something people write songs and stories about.
We used to say distance was nothing.
Just a number.
Just 114 kilometers between two points on a map.
Just highways, bus rides, and long nights waiting for weekends.
We believed love was stronger than that.
And maybe, in the beginning, it was.
Distance was simply the first problem. The first item written on an invisible list neither of us knew we were creating. It sat quietly at the top while we convinced ourselves it would never grow bigger.
Because in the beginning, we made it work.
Phone calls that lasted until sunrise.
Good morning texts and calls that arrived before alarms even rang.
Random photos of the sky, the food we were eating, the streets we were walking through—little pieces of our days sent across cities like fragments of a shared life.
Every message was proof.
Proof that we were still there.
Proof that love could travel farther than roads.
But time passed.
And time… time turned out to be far more dangerous than distance ever was.
Because distance only separates bodies.
Time separates lives.
Slowly, quietly, the days filled up. Work and school grew heavier. Responsibilities multiplied like shadows at sunset. The more help you got, the lesser time you had.
It happened so gradually that neither of us noticed when things started to change.
Calls became shorter.
Messages came later.
Replies turned into seen notifications that sat unanswered for hours.
Then days.
At first, we explained it away.
You were busy.
I was tired.
Life was just… life.
But time is a strange thing. It stretches differently depending on who is waiting.
Five minutes can feel harmless to the one who is occupied. But to the one staring at a silent phone, five minutes can feel like abandonment.
Soon, other problems began appearing on that invisible list.
Small ones.
The kind that don’t seem important enough to talk about. The kind that slowly grow sharp edges when left alone too long.
Letting each other know.
Where we were going.
Who we were with.
What time we’d be home.
Simple things.
Things that once came naturally, without being asked.
Now they had to be requested.
“Where are you?”
“What time will you get home?”
“Are you still with your friends?”
“Why aren’t you answering?”
Questions that were never meant to sound accusatory started carrying the weight of doubt.
And doubt is heavy.
Heavier than distance.
Heavier than time.
There were nights when my phone screen stayed lit long after midnight.
Missed calls.
Unsent messages rewritten ten times before finally being sent.
Texts that stayed unread until my thoughts began racing faster than reason.
Deleted messages after the frustrating feeling of abandonment.
Maybe your phone died.
Maybe you fell asleep.
Maybe you were busy.
Maybe you simply forgot.
Or maybe…
Maybe you just didn’t think of me.
That last thought was the one that ruined everything.
Because silence has a way of feeding the worst parts of our imagination. I would fall asleep with disappointment sitting heavy in my chest, the unanswered messages glowing faintly in the dark beside my bed. And the next morning, there would be the same words.
“I’ll make it up to you.”
Words that sounded comforting.
Words that promised repair.
Words that slowly lost meaning the more often they were said.
Because promises only matter when they live long enough to become actions.
Otherwise, they’re just soft apologies wrapped in hope.
At some point, the fights began.
They used to be rare.
Once a month.
Arguments that ended quickly, replaced by apologies and laughter and reassurances that we were still okay.
But somewhere along the way, something shifted.
Once a month became twice.
Twice became once a week.
Then twice a week.
The same conversations repeating themselves like a broken recording.
“You don’t tell me anything anymore.”
“You’re always overthinking.”
“You never have time for me.”
“I’m doing my best.”
“You’re not trying.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You’re changing.”
Maybe we both were.
Because love doesn’t stay frozen in time. People grow. Responsibilities grow. And sometimes the space between two people grows faster than the love trying to hold them together. What hurt the most wasn’t the fighting. It was the feeling that neither of us knew how to stop it. Every argument felt like trying to hold water in our hands.
We kept trying. But it kept slipping through our fingers. There were nights when the silence after a fight felt louder than the fight itself. Two people staring at the same darkness from different places, both wondering the same question but too tired, too stubborn, or too afraid to say it out loud.
What are we doing wrong?
Was it the distance?
Was it the time?
Was it the exhaustion of living separate lives while trying to hold onto one shared heart?
Or was it something simpler and more painful than that?
Maybe love didn’t disappear.
Maybe it was still there.
Just buried under missed calls, unanswered messages, long workdays, and the quiet resentment that grows when two people begin to feel alone… even while being together.
Because sometimes love doesn’t end in a dramatic moment.
Sometimes it slowly suffocates under the weight of ordinary days.
And the scariest part isn’t realizing something is wrong.
The scariest part is realizing you both still love each other… but neither of you knows how to fix it anymore.
So the question keeps lingering in the quiet spaces between conversations.
A question that echoes louder every day.
What are we doing wrong?
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