I  am involved in not one but nine long-distance relationships. When I left for college I had no intentions of claiming any of the sort, but I am now two months into the semester and find myself devoting nearly every second of my free time to scheduling Skype dates, engaging in Facebook discussions and making late-night phone calls on the picnic tables outside of Anderson in the increasingly frigid October air.

Before I left, a multitude of worries barraged my thoughts. My greatest fear was not just that my friends and I would grow apart, but that I wouldn’t care that we had. I was afraid of the impending apathy of my life.

In order to combat this I have been spending an inordinate amount of time attached to my things in order to remain attached to people. My phone connects me to friends in Portland, Boston, Maine, Vermont and back home in California. Facebook permits me to have conversations with my friend in Rome who otherwise would be quite difficult to catch and expensive to talk to because of the distance. But the more text messages I send and the more Skype calls I make, the more I am beginning to realize that my attempts to maintain these relationships are frustratingly futile.

It has been said that technology is deteriorating the modern relationship. But it always seemed to me to enhance my friendships. The time spent apart, however, has made it clear that that is exactly what it was: an enhancement, not the foundation of a relationship. Being able to communicate with people through technology is a harrowing feature of modernity. It would be undoubtedly more difficult to hear of each other’s lives without the utility of Facebook or our cell phones. But at the same time, there is no replacement for good ol’ fashioned conversation.

I cannot duplicate the experience of interacting with a person through Facebook chat. I cannot simulate the feeling of being in the presence of a friend through texting him. And I cannot receive a hug from the image on my Skype screen. No matter how fervently I attempt to retain these relationships in the form I left them in, it is something I will never be able to do. And that has proved incredibly difficult to admit.

But taking a break now does not mean that we cannot pick up where we left off. As my friend’s roommate told her, “having any intense emotion towards your friends at all just proves that you care.” So rather than draw me into submission, the intense frustration and futility I often feel in attempting to maintain these relationships while we are apart assures me that they are worth the effort.

And that is in itself is the strikingly paradoxical nature of the situation: Although my efforts will invariably be in vain, the very fact that I am willing to make them at all is what makes them worthwhile.