The Road to the Present

July 2011

I’m sitting on a plane, furiously typing away on the tiny keyboard of my iPhone. I suppose I could pull out my laptop, but I’m too exhausted from the long work week I’ve just spent in Colorado Springs to face my computer right now. At least that much hasn’t changed since the last time I wrote, but just about every other aspect of my life has.

I don’t really want to go into the details of what happened when I left Texas… or rather, why I left Texas. There were many times I wanted to write it all down, to get it off my chest, but the thought of recounting all of it made me feel sick. Instead, I started over. I moved to DC, stepped out from behind the computer screen, and got my life back.  I spent many months just finding myself again.  Finding that perky, spontaneous, exploratory girl that I had once been but somehow lost. And I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time.

For the first time in many long years, I feel like I’m home. I have a sizable townhouse on the edge of Old Town, and I don’t think there’s been a weekend since I moved here that a friend didn’t pop over for a day or two. My brother lives less than a mile from me, and he and I are closer friends than we’ve ever been. I’ve rediscovered the hobbies that I’d let wane, and music has once again become a staple in my life. Hell, there’s a karaoke bar in Old Town were everybody knows me by name when I walk in the door. I like to call it my ‘Cheers.’ I’ve explored so much of the local DC and NoVa nightlife, that I’ve considered starting a blog about the diamonds in the rough.

I’ve also recently begun seeing someone. Maybe that’s why I’m choosing now to return to OD, because part of me just wants to gush about it, about him. His name is Chris. We met last year right before I moved. Actually, we met the week I was in DC looking for a new home.

Chris worked for my company very briefly, but decided that the position wasn’t exactly what he was looking for, and he moved on. My brother was his boss during that time, and they have since become good friends. They ended up forming, with several other friends and coworkers, a ‘concert crew’ that gets together a couple times a month to check out the best shows in the area. I have similar taste in music, so I was immediately welcomed into the crew. That’s when I met Chris.  Shortly after meeting, he invited me to a concert… but not as part of the crew. Just me. I didn’t turn him down, but I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to go, either. I’d only been in DC a couple of weeks at that point, and I was in no shape emotionally to even consider dating. And I knew that. Turned out, though, that the show was canceled, and I didn’t make an attempt to reschedule. We did, however, continue to hang out and get to know each other during the regular outings with the concert crew.

Fast forward to about three months ago. I had finally begun to feel some stability in my life. I had begun to feel like myself again. I had also decided that I was ready to start dating. I signed up for a couple of online dating sites, went out for several dinners and drinks, but never met anyone that I was even remotely interested in. One evening, my brother, Rob, planned a happy hour get together at a sports bar in DC. It was just a handful of friends: Rob, Christy, our friend David, myself… and Chris. It was not a typical gathering for this particular group. Chris and I sat next to each other and chatted over several beers. It was the first time we’d been in a relatively quiet place where we could have a normal conversation. After that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I even started having dreams about him. I was utterly consumed.

So, what’s the normal thing for a girl with a huge crush to do? Facebook stalk. No, not really, but I did snoop a bit. You can imagine how distraught I was to learn that he had started seeing someone a few months prior. I felt dejected.

I kept my feelings for Chris to myself for about a month. I hoped that they might just… go away, but they only got stronger. I finally admitted to both my brother and Christy that I was falling head over heels for him. And they both gave me the same advice. Tell him.

But I didn’t. At least not for another month. I struggled over what to do. He was seeing someone, and I didn’t want to be that girl that tried to come in between a happy relationship. But at the same time, it’s not like he was married to her, and in all honesty, none of us had ever met her, and he never talked about her. It was a conundrum.

Fast forward again to a month ago. I found myself sitting at a bar in a bowling alley with my brother, bowling ball in one hand, pitcher of beer in the other. I said to Rob, "I’m going to tell him. I have to tell him. This has been agonizing! I’ll just lay it out there, and let him respond if he wants to." I typed up a ridiculously long text, and stared at my phone for probably ten minutes reading and re-reading it. And when I finally pushed the send button, I thought I was going to vomit.

"I know this is going to seem random, out of the blue. But, I have this motto that you don’t get what you don’t ask for. So, I’m just going to come out and say this. I like you. And it’s killing me to not be able to see where something between us could go.

I know that you’re in a relationship, so I don’t expect a response. I just needed you to know this in case the situation… changes. And if you’re not interested anyway, no worries. I don’t know the meaning of awkward, so I fully expect there to be lots of concert nights in the future regardless!

That is all. Carry on."

He didn’t respond immediately, but I didnt expect him to. I knew he was in San Francisco for work, so there was a three hour time difference between us. An hour passed. Rob and I wrapped up our last round of bowling. Two hours passed. We headed over to a bar across the street, where I proceeded to drink myself silly. Three hours passed. And I got a text back. And it was good.

Two days later, a Sunda

y afternoon, I was sitting in an Irish pub in Old Town, my leg resting against Chris’s while we chattered non-stop over Guinness. Come to find out, Chris had amicably split with his girlfriend just days before I messaged him. And long story short, he had been crazy about me since the day he met me. He said he felt like he was in the twilight zone when he first got my message. He commented that he must have seriously misread me when he had asked me out all those months ago, and I explained why I had seemed so distant and uninterested during that time. He asked me when I knew that I wanted something more, and told him about how my feelings grew after that happy hour rendezvous several months prior. He admitted that the only reason he’d come that night was to see me. He was working long hours during that time, and he actually went back to the office after our drinks. We sat at that bar for hours getting to know each other on an entirely new level. And we’ve been nearly inseparable since.

He treats me like a queen, like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. He opens the car door for me, and if I casually mention what I’d like at a restaurant, he orders for me. He takes me to places where he thinks I would love to work on my photography, like museums and the sculpture gardens. We’ve been to fancy dinners and metal concerts and to wineries and to burlesque shows. We’ve hung wishes on the Wishing Tree at the National Mall, but of course kept our wishes secret to ensure they come true. The most perfect date he’s taken me on was to a Japanese restaurant overlooking the Potomac. He specifically reserved a window table so we could watch the sunset over the water. Afterwards, we found a large flat rock on the riverbank to sit, and what do you know? Fireworks start shooting off from a barge about a hundred feet in front of us. There on that rock, he kissed me underneath that fiery glow in the sky, and I fell in love with him.

I’m going to say something now that I have never said before. I’m going to marry this man. Everyone knows that I believe in fate…

Annnnnnnd, that’s when my plane landed.  Much like yesterday’s post, I started that entry sometime over the summer, but never finished it.  I was on my way home from a week away in Colorado, and the last thing I wanted to do was take more time away from Chris with my laptop.  So I’ll attempt to finish it now.

Chris has made the ultimate connection with me — mind, body and soul.  We work in nearly identical fields, and I never realized just how important it is that your partner be on the same intellectual level.  We see eye to eye on all of the major life decisions, like the choice to be child free.  We communicate better than I ever dreamed possible.  There are no boundaries to our topics of conversation, and I am never even the slightest bit anxious about bringing up what might normally be an uncomfortable discussion.  And physically?  Let’s face it.  Physical intimacy has never been true intimacy for me.  Sex and emotion have never had anything to do with each other in my eyes, and I never understood why other women seemed to so readily connect the two.  But for the first time in my life, I have experienced true, overwhelming, take-my-breath-away, almost-brought-me-to-tears intimacy, a beautiful melding of touch and emotion.  I am still completely in awe of how he makes me feel.

As many of you touched on in the notes of my previous entry, as awful as my relationship with Chuck turned out, look where it got me.  I truly believe that fate led me to DC, that fate led me to him.  And had I not been through those painful two years in Texas, I honestly do not think that I would have been able to appreciate what I’ve been given.  As Tammy (who, by the way, has met and adores Chris, which has never happened!) puts it, five years ago, I would’ve chewed him up and spat him out.  I needed to learn appreciation and humbleness before I deserved a man like Chris, and I sometimes still don’t think that I deserve him.  But my god, am I glad I have him.  Interestingly, Chris was in a very similar relationship a few years back.  We’ve had many long conversations about how that time in our lives was when we were at our weakest and how it shaped our personalities and ideals of future relationships.  Because of this unique commonality, we can relate to each other in a way I never expected.

And yes, I meant every last word of the final paragraph from that entry I started back in July.  He is the man that I’m going to marry.  He’s the man I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.  Marriage has always seemed a little silly and unimportant to me.  But Chris makes me understand why people want so badly to make that ultimate commitment to another person.  I want to share his name, and I want to share my heart.  I want to share every part of me with him.  And I know he feels the same about me.  I have no doubts.

So!  All that being said, you know what part comes next.  I’ve been documenting the last year in photos, which means I’ll be inundating you folks with pictures over the coming days/weeks.  I’ll try to keep my bandwidth hogging to a minimum and only post the best, most important captures of my journey.  Until then…
 

October 2011, vacationing in San Francisco.  Taken on the boat to Alcatraz.

Cheers!
Felina