The First Night Of The Rest Of My Life

Once upon a time there was a girl who was in love with romance. She read book after book by Nicolas Sparks, daydreamed about finding Prince Charming, planned intricate details of her wedding, made lists of must-have qualities of the perfect guy, and always cried during the movie Pearl Harbor. Never having been truly "in love", her biggest fear was that life would pass by too quickly and not give her the opportunity to meet The One, and that one day she would look back, lonely and wishful, and wonder what had happened.

That girl... Was me. I am literally rolling my eyes at past-tense me. What was I thinking? And how on earth did I come to own eighteen books by Sparks? Did I realize they're all kind of the same story, in the same state, with a slight character modification here and there? And also, what exactly made Edward Cullen so desirable? And how could I so happily hear the words "As you wish" out of Wesley's mouth and not cringe at the sappiness? 

You want to know what caused the 180? It was the night of October 23, 2011.
My friend T and I decided to randomly throw a get-together for no good reason but to celebrate the serendipitous fact that we both ended up living in the same apartment complex and had no idea we would meet each other 2 months prior.We spent ridiculous amounts of money on all flavors of junk food and then invited basically all the church friends we knew, and most of them showed up.
After some grilled burgers we all settled down to watch a movie and had a pretty good time just hanging out. One by one, guests trickled slowly out the door until only 2 remained. These guys:

One of them (far right) lived over an hour away and decided he didn't feel like driving. He wandered into my bedroom and quietly fell asleep without alerting anyone. 

The other took ownership of my couch and no matter how much I asked, prodded, whined, and shoved, refused to move. At the time I didn't really know much about him, so I didn't know he worked oil field and was probably too tired to get up and to lazy to care that this was a girls apartment and he needed to get out of here soon. 

He didn't get out. All I succeeded in doing was pushing him off the couch and somehow toppling over onto him in the process. And there we stayed, laying side by side, and spent the entire night talking. Just talking. Sometime around 4AM, G wandered out of my bedroom dazed and confused, took one look at us laying on the floor, and went back to bed. 

They both left next morning and I groggily took back my bed and drifted off to sleep. 

Somehow, for some inexpiable reason, that was the night that brought us together 3 years ago, and together we have been ever since. 

You know the quote by Winnie the Poo that says "Ever since I met you, I knew and adventure was going to happen." ? That could not be closer to the truth. 

The time that I really, truly met Philip Wyeth, I had no idea that I'd just spent the night talking with the most important person of my life. I just knew that he was one of the most cunning, daring, frustrating, devious person I'd met, and that we needed to spend some more time together. I felt suspicious, curious, hesitant, and a little unsure of where I wanted this to go, but I was too intrigued to just ignore him. 

And so there went the romantic side of me. I spent the next few days subconsciously organizing my mind so that there would be room for him along with the million other things I was responsible for, like not forgetting to buy bathroom tissue and drinking 64 ounces of water a day. I stopped wanting romance because I had more. I had this strange relationship with this guy who drove me crazy with ever other sentence, and who somehow made me believe it was a great idea to dye our hair blue (and we did... before we knew each other's names). Looking back on it I really wish I had recorded every detail of our beginnings, How I Met Your Mother style, so that I could have enough of a story to put into a book of some kind. Unfortunately, these blog posts will have to do. 

Wow, 3 years went by fast!