I have been in a long distance relationship for 46 months (almost 4 years) now and I’d never write about this if it wasn’t for Om’s post — The Pain of Distance — it feels like a sting in the gut. I kept evading this pain or feeling but reading the post made me stop and put me in deep thought.

My girlfriend is Korean, there is a whole backstory on how we met (that’s for another day), but before 2020 — we’ve never been apart for longer than 2 months (8-10 weeks). It’s either me going to Seoul, we meet in the middle (Singapore, Taiwan), or she went to Jakarta.

This COVID changed everything as we haven’t met for 17 weeks and counting (went to Korea end of February until early March when COVID was growing like crazy there). There’s even a chance we might not meet again this year.

Indonesia government closed the border for foreigner without KITAS/KITAP and Korean government is making visa request exceptionally hard, and even if you got it you have to be quarantined for 2 weeks with 2,1m KRW (~23 to 24m IDR). With a max of 30 days stay, that is simply outrageous.

There’s this feeling of helplessness and pain and it just brought you back the reality that we have different nationalities and separated by distance and borders. I wished that she’s Indonesian sometimes or perhaps, I’m Korean. But we’re not. And it’s excruciatingly hard to process.

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