When Do We Jump The Wall
I'm in Sevilla, lying on Mr. International’s chest, freshly up from a nap because my nervous system is at peak comfort. I never take naps. I just finally have everything in the world beneath me.
It's amazing. We knew we would have less than 24 hours together in Sevilla, and yet I didn't even question three hours of lying in bed talking about whatever thought floated up. That's the tragically beautiful thing about our relationship. We met in Barcelona, moved in together three months into knowing each other, then went long distance. So we've had no distance at all and all the distance in the world. We've been long distance since July, and this was our shortest trip yet — usually we have days and days.
The oddest part? Despite knowing conceptually how limited our time was, our hearts and bodies felt comfort, peace, an acceptance of lingering. I knew we'd wake up in the morning and basically just have to go to the airport. And that didn't make me want to leap up and run around Sevilla trying to manufacture every memory in the world. It made me sink into his chest more.
I brought up how I'm really trying to brainstorm my highest career path, and the conversation quickly spun toward how do I get into medicine. In the column he wrote me on our anniversary, he beautifully wrote: "you are the emotion, I am the reason." As I smiled to my ears, dreamed, and saw no limits on building a company dedicated to reframing healthcare, he poured rationale and logic down my throat.
When the conversation naturally pivoted to abusive relationships — and me joking that there should be an Oura Ring for testing someone's hormones and chemical imbalances when getting into a new relationship (my own life has been witness and testament to the DHEA hormone x narcissistic partner connection) — he sliced me with the sword of: "then people would be even more miserable, because the dating pool would get smaller, and it's wishful thinking that the abusive people would go get help."
He kissed me and told me the thing he loves most about me is how much I trust the world. I tried desperately to explain that I see the good because I ask for the good out of life — that I've been on the opposite side of the spoon, and it's a choice not to receive the bad, not a deflection from it. He said: yes, I get that from being in the army. I wished he said more about that. But that was really all I got.
Then he told me there's a Black Mirror episode about my exact invention. I watched it last night.
Hang the DJ. The Oura Rng in the show is a tiny AI that plays matchmaker, allowing couples to jointly check expiration dates on their relationships — ranging from hours to years. They date and date until they find the one with a 99.8% match rate. At first, the participants love the system. They can't imagine the option paralysis people suffered before, trying to find the one on their own, how hard it was when it wasn't all mapped out.
The first two people the show follows are perfect for each other, but they're given a 12-hour expiry date. Then they get paired with different partners — sometimes for years — and realize they will never feel the way they did in those first twelve hours again. When they're finally matched together for a second time, they decide not to check the expiry date. To live it like it's forever.
Like me and Mr. International in Sevilla.
Eventually, however — the guy, Frank, slips aside and checks the expiry on his own, unable to push away the fear that they might not get forever. The moment he does, because the two didn't check together and he broke his promise, their timeline collapses from five years to ten hours. Frank panics. They plan an escape — jumping the wall, realizing neither of them can remember anything from before the experiment, that they're likely part of a simulation. Before they know it, they're over the wall, and the 99.8% match rate appears. They find each other in the real world, in a bar, playing "Hang the DJ."
The thesis of the episode lands like a fist: the goal of love isn't to subscribe to the system. It's to rebel against it together.
And this is the exact crossroads I've arrived at with Mr. International.
I've been trusting life to nurture our relationship the whole time. In the name of surrender and true love, I've been taking the back seat — saying we will know if we're meant to be together, either life will bring us to the same continent again or not. And it's been working. Kinda. We've traveled to see each other. Our schedules have aligned. But they're just travel — short days we pray will last forever, and they come and go and send us back into long distance again.
What hasn't revealed itself is a direct path back to each other. A real end to long distance.
We've become so good at long distance out of a kind of marriage to the concept itself. Better at doing it than deciding its end and planning past it. Maybe that's because of where we are in life right now — he's building his business in Barcelona, I'm finishing my degree in the States. Or maybe that's us subscribing to a simulation that's never going to let us out, or will take years of losing the best version of what we could be.
What happens if we stop sending mixed signals to life and start rebelling in the name of love? What if our conviction that we are each other's person is so strong, we drive life to bring us together? What if instead of waiting for evidence that we're meant to be, we create that evidence?
To quote Mr. International’s column again: "love isn't something you find — it's something you build, brick by brick, moment by moment."
What does that look like? Because as I write this, I'm not only dying to know — I'm worried I've been going about this all wrong.