the story of boy meets girl

I've known Chris since the summer of 1999. I met him at my cousin's house. She lived in a town about 30 minutes away from me but I hung out there a lot with her and her friends. The first night we met, we made bacon in something called a Bacon Wave that my cousin and I had found at Goodwill that day.

He asked me out a few weeks later, shortly after I returned from a family vacation in California (where my cousin had told me that she knew he liked me) and I said yes. Being 16 and having had only one previous boyfriend for a month the summer before, I was, of course, giddy and confused and excited and all sorts of emotions all at once.

We dated for about a month. Being quite new to the whole dating thing, I wasn't very good at it, or about communicating my feelings and so, after a month, I gave him the dreaded "let's just be friends" talk. I'm sure I threw an "it's not you, it's me" in there. Please, cut me some slack. I was 16.

Through our junior and senior years we would see each other here and there at events and gatherings and we both ended up at the same university. My cousin and her boyfriend at the time and Chris and I would hang out all the time together. We became BFFs to the point where I'm pretty sure my cousin would get a little jealous of how much time the two of us spent together. I'll spare you all of the tiny details from the next 9 years leading up to present and just say that there were some pivotal moments scattered throughout those years that could have lead to us dating again but for some reason or another, none of them did. Not until last summer, when he asked again and I (eventually) said yes.

It was a little odd for me in the beginning, that this was the same person who was my second boyfriend when I was 16. That time of my life felt so foreign to me and now here was this person from that time becoming an even bigger part of my life.

But it wasn’t foreign, because this was the person I stayed up with on countless late nights our freshman year of college trying to figure out what I should do with my life (which I still haven’t totally figured out but I’m at least a little more comfortable with that fact). This was the same person who I’d meet up with after a late night of working at the student newspaper and smoked with outside the steps of his dorm (Sidenote: We don't smoke anymore. Smoking is bad, kids. Don't do it!)

It was the same person who got (understandably) sad when I called him up as I was driving away to tell him I was moving to Colorado after graduating from college and it was the same person that a few months later, visited me in Colorado when I started to finally realize that I might be in love with my best friend. It’s the same person who told me he loved me freshman year of college and told me 9 years later that he’s never stopped loving me. The same person who told me he knew from the day he met me when we were 16 that there was something special. It’s the same person I decided to say “yes” to after a few days of deliberation of whether or not we should try dating again, 10 years after we first tried it.

But when we were getting close to our one-year anniversary of dating, I started to get a little scared because I had a good idea that the "big question" was going to come up soon. I did what I do with anything I have questions about. Googled it. And let me tell you, it's hard to find articles on girls who are hesitant to get married. After a few searches and reading a few articles about guys who weren't ready to pop the question, I gave up and was a bit frazzled.

And then finally, a few weeks ago, I figured it out.

Whether I was ready to marry him was not a decision about whether he was the right one (because he sooo was), but whether I was really ready to accept that I am who I am. And that I was ready to accept that someone would actually love me just the way I am and just the way I’ve always been without any need for change. Tears fill my eyes every time he tells me sincerely how much he loves me because, deep down, I never thought I’d hear those words from someone. And then when I did, I got scared. Because it meant I didn’t have to change a thing about myself. Which is what I thought I’ve needed to do for the last 11 years of my life.

And so this past weekend, when we went to Kansas City to celebrate our one-year dating anniversary and we went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum and sat down on a bench that we sat on when we started dating again last year ...

and when he got down on one knee after saying some incredibly sweet things to me, opened a ring box and asked me if I'd marry him ...

I said yes!