10.5.14
NOTHING [WILL BE] THE SAME
Her Story
Honestly, I cannot remember the first time I met Fabian. Or the first time we actually spoke. I guess it was sometime during fall 2008 when he became a 1L at Georgetown Law. I remember thinking he was cute -- but because I was a super cool 3L at the time, and 1Ls were basically the "loser freshmen" of law school, I probably ignored him in the hallways or knocked his books out of his hands for fun.
I do remember, however, when Fabian first wrote me a message on Facebook, demanding that I change my privacy settings so that he could add me as a Facebook friend. From then on, a lighthearted, flirtatious friendship started and Fabian's dry, sarcastic humor was the perfect match for my equally dry, sarcastic personality. Over the next three years, we would talk occassionally on gchat, follow each other on Twitter, and then one day become BBM buddies (all the while, finding the other person completely hilarious). By this time, I had developed a huge crush on Fabian, but because he was two years my junior, I never took him seriously and always referred to him as my "Young-and-Tender" (a nickname I learned later that he despised). On top of that, we lived on opposite coasts (me in LA, him in NY), and I had a strong disbelief in long-distance relationships.
Early 2012, Fabian and I started communicating more frequently via BBM and Twitter and learned that we had a shared love for Rihanna (and a shared hatred for Chris Brown). One day I emailed Fabian a random TMZ article about Seinfeld (we're both huge Seinfeld fans), and after some back and forth banter about stuff that wasn't important -- Fabian wrote 7 words that would eventually change our lives: "You get me. Host my LA trip." Two days later, his flight was booked, and less than three weeks later, we spent our first weekend together. Despite having NEVER hung out one-on-one before (or even have a phone conversation, for that matter), the chemistry as soon as Fabian got to my apartment was INSTANT. That weekend, Fabian jokingly told me that we'd get married one day.
Two weeks later, we were in a relationship, eight months later, we were engaged, and despite my initial reservations about a long distance relationship, we made that first year and eight months work by flying to see each other every other weekend and sleeping together on video chat with the light on every single night (yes.....every.single.night. We're crazy.).
As we lead up to the big day, I constantly am in disbelief that I found someone I fit so perfectly with, even when I am being my own imperfect self. Our humor, our values, and our outlooks on life are just so in sync, it's eerie. Fabian, I can spend all day laughing with (and sometimes at) you and you never stop making me smile. You're the butter to my popcorn, the bear to my gummi, and the beat to my twerk. Who knew the cute, shy, quiet, loser 1L could be all that?
His Story
I once asked Sibo out on a date to Kanlaya Thai Cuisine in May of 2009 and she told me something along the lines of, “I’m really busy with schoolwork right now, so maybe after that finishes up,” which meant “Hahahahahahahahahahahahah, no.” This was a crushing blow to my self-confidence as it had come after several days of pretending to study in the Wolff Library when all that was going on was that I found out she studied there and I would find a cubicle within 10 yards of her and watch the Masters on my Macbook in between sneaking glances at her. After all the work I had put in since first seeing her at the BLSA Welcome to Law School event on August 29, 2008, this felt like the end of a journey. All of the passive aggressive flirting due to a fear of revealing how truly pressed I was was for naught. The hours I spent carefully crafting that first Facebook message, the gchat statuses that I made sure would subtly catch her attention, the times I would awkwardly cut short our interactions/conversations because I wanted to make sure to end on a high note to leave a positive impression, regardless of the timing of the high note, all of it came to nothing. At the time, I consoled myself with the knowledge that the signs of her lack of interest were always there. After all, she called me “Young and Tender,” which really just meant “Your mustache can’t even dream of glancing your chinstrap, I would never.”
And so it was that I embarked upon on my Lost Years. From May 2009-February 2012, I did a lot of soul searching and a lot of growing. I cooked meat without using a Foreman grill for the first time, I bought my first full size bed, my first bed set that didn’t feature comic book characters, I tried to learn how to tie a tie, one time I thought about learning to tie a bowtie, I bought (but never wore) a shirt that required cufflinks, I (kind of) changed a flat tire on my own, did my taxes for the first time, in short, I became a man. I also flirted with Sibo a lot.
Somewhere between our first DM and The E-Mail That Changed Our Lives, the flirting got out of hand. Not in like a, this is too much flirting way, but in a there’s an unreasonable amount of your daily happiness dependent upon your interactions with this person way. I think when you’re in a relationship and it’s mutual it’s called love, but when you are single, technically unemployed, carrying mountains of student loan debt and living at home there’s another word for it. Then, on February 22nd, 2012…The E-Mail That Changed Our Lives. An e-mail chain that started by discussing Mr. Kruger from “Seinfeld” ended with me inviting myself to Los Angeles. Everything since then has been kind of a blur, a happy blur, but a blur nonetheless. The first visit that blew away both our expectations, the Thursday, Friday and Sunday nights spent in airport security lines, the Monday mornings landing at JFK and going straight to work, the hours spent on video chat on gmail before the crappy redesign pushed us over to Skype for good before my computer started doing that screechy feedback thing forcing us back to gchat, the time someone who shall not be named secretly measured your ring finger for me and told me you were a size 13 and I rationalized that she was probably right because you had complained that you thought you had big fingers, the bar exam studying, the resume and cover letter updating, all the interviews and job applications, the immaculate pancake breakfasts that forced me to reconsider whether my mom (Mummy, don’t read this) really was the best Breakfast maker of all time…everything leading up to now.
So, I’m not really sure how to end this, but it has been an incredible ride to even get to this point and I can’t think of a clearer sign of how much I love you and how happy you make me than the fact I’m genuinely happily counting down the days until 10/5/14 even though I know you hold the misguided belief that pork shouldn’t be eaten everyday and that vegetables should be a part of a balanced dinner.
