Dear Clayton: Equidistance is a real word

I turned a page and came across a new word today. It’s a new book, the 18th out of the 20 books I’m supposed to read this year. It’s a bit of a comedown actually, last year I had finished 50 or so. That’s a truckload of new words, which I usually find handy when I play Wordscapes, but can’t use when I try to describe you.

Today this book taught me the word equidistant. Context clues tells me that this should be synonymous to proximity or the nearness in space, time, or relationship according to Google. However equidistant, as far as my meager knowledge on newly minted English words, was new and it spoke to me on a whole new level.

According to Google it meant at equal distances.

It meant that by now, after almost a year, we’ve kept in touch but held on to our valuable spaces both at a safe and equal distances. Safe, because we can’t bear to risk. Distance protected both of us from the shattering loss of not being with each other. The anti-thesis to an infamous cliché.

It’s a cold word. Isn’t it surprising? Words also have a connotation. Somehow I’m hoping to meet a word that tells me of hope, a synonym, that one day the distance will grow shorter.