Chris and I first met when I was in kindergarten. He's my brother's age so he was in 2nd grade. Our moms were both on PTO for the elementary school and they became friends. Chris has a younger brother my age, and so the moms started setting up play dates for us all. A beautiful friendship ensued.
When I was in 7th grade, Chris's family was moving. I was upset that they all were moving, especially since Chris's little brother Kevin was very much like a brother/best friend to me. Thankfully with the marvels of never outdated technology like AOL Instant Messenger, Kevin and I were able to stay in contact throughout the years.
When I was in 9th grade, I was in an ensemble that had made it to ISSMA state solo & ensemble contest. The contest took place at a high school in northern Indianapolis, and all the choirs that qualified throughout the state went to that contest. As my ensemble was getting ready to perform, we saw the last group come out. I accidentally bumped into someone, and while trying to say sorry, alarms went off. It was Chris. Only a few words were able to be exchanged, but it was a surprise and a good one.
Also in 9th grade, I went to the Indy 500 for the first time in my life. This was an event that Chris's family always attended, and I knew this. My friend who invited me and I found a way to get to the house where Chris and his family were going to be. We arranged this all through Kevin, as he was who we wanted to see. While there, I ended up on the back porch where I found Chris and we started talking. Looking back, I actually spent more time talking to Chris than Kevin, even though my stories were only of Kevin.
The summer after 9th grade was when Chris and I started talking on AIM. He talked to me on there more often than Kevin did, and that was a year where I needed a friend because of some serious family things going on at home. Chris became a confidant, and then so much more. We started talking less about the past and more about the present, and then talking became flirting and flirting became longing. 15 at the time, I was "falling in love" with this boy.
September 2006, into the start of my sophomore year, Chris and his family had come to Indianapolis for a colts game. Not one for sports, Chris was going to stay at a relatives house when I invited him over. The original intention was to go down to the local parks and hang out, but with hormones raging and the whole "absence makes the heart grow fonder" thing, we definitely enjoyed each other's company more than any sibling or park could. I'm sure looking from the outside in it probably looked gross and teen-movie esque, but I was in heaven.
We didn't see each other until almost exactly a year later. We remained in contact but not with some promise to stay with each other (much to my dislike). Chris graduated high school and was off to college in the fall, a college that was only an hour and a half away from where I lived rather than the four hours away his previous home was. Over the summer we talked about getting together officially in the abstract, but knew that it was not the most ideal situation. However in the end, wanting to be with each other won in the end. September 17th, 2007; he asked me to be his girlfriend.
There were some good times and some not so good times to be had. I--as a high schooler--had a busy drama-filled life where I wanted more someone to be by me rather than a communication device away. But we managed to make it work through the distance, which at one point was 4100 miles of distance when I spent the summer in France. We made it through a lot, until we couldn't make it through anything anymore.
I'm here wanting to talk about the positives. The truth of the matter is if we hadn't have broken up 20 months into our relationship, there's no way we could have gotten back together at all. We beat the odds, we lasted for a good while despite our age and our distance, and I had even sent in my acceptance at the same college he was attending. But because we broke up when we did, we were able to take some time to heal and grow into our own people, and no matter how I reference those years in the present, I am forever grateful that we did, for the sake of our current relationship.
We spent a little more than four years apart. Granted, not all of that was *completely* apart (hey some things are hard to let go lol) but again, everything happens for a reason. If we had gotten back together my freshman or sophomore year of college when we were heading in that direction again I don't think we'd be here today. Waiting until neither of us were in Muncie anymore, I was basically graduated, he had a job and lived less than 20 minutes away, we both had cars and our own income so it didn't feel like one was leaning on the other...that's what we needed. We needed the stability of our own lives in order to succeed combining them again.
This relationship was one of those where we kind of just...happened. Neither of us knows exactly when we started dating again and that actually kind of makes it better. The whole "monthaversary" thing seems behind us and this just feels more...adult. More mature. More...what you look for in a significant other leading towards marriage.
I know I've said all this before. But sometimes...you just know. I like to say I've known since 2006...but I know I know now.
I love him.
No comments:
Post a Comment