Sorry if you’ve answered this before, but how did you and ETD meet? I love reading about your interactions! You guys are so sweet and you make me excited to find someone in the future who loves me and my oddities. ^-^
All right well brace yourselves, this is likely not as romantic as you’re thinking.
It was online a very long time ago, on a geeky writer fanzine run predominantly by elf enthusiasts (the final Lord of the Rings had just come out, everything was elves for a long time). He liked my writing, and I liked that he liked my writing, so we became friends in what would turn out to be very turbulent times for both of us.
I was an emotional wreck, stuck at home, dating my abusive ex and unable to get away from him, and ETD was also going through some shit as well. My abusive ex was also on the fanzine (because wherever I went online, he went too. He also used to log in as me and go through my messages and delete any he didn’t like) and unlike ETD and a few others, like @ahzuri and @dreamwaffles (holy crap we’ve been friends a long time), he thought my writing was worthless and took every opportunity to put me down and just generally be a bag of assholes.
So while I was dating Asshole, future-husband-to-be and cryptid-in-training now known as ETD, sort of filled in the void where emotional stability and support ought to be. Something which I was also doing for him, while we both urged the other to get help and basically just sort of held each other above water long enough to find the strength to keep kicking on our own again. He was my best friend, long before I realized he was my soul mate. (Though not necessarily my sole mate, I’ve never ascribed to the idea of “one true love” or fate.)
I still remember the first time we had a webcam chat and I felt my stomach drop cause “oh no he’s hot”. I tried valiantly to stop staring at his hands or the crook of his smile, but the guy talks a lot with his hands and smiles a lot too, so it wasn’t easy. And I was still very much firmly in denial that I had feelings for him because nope nope nope, that just wouldn’t do. Besides, I was still dating Asshole and as much as I was desperately unhappy, I was just as equally desperate for his approval and affection and thought maybe if I just tried harder, I might deserve it.
Except things just kept going from bad to worse and some days the only thing keeping me going was the hour a day where I could talk to the dorky American sending me vaguely flirty but mostly benign friendly messages from over 4000 miles away, and who was always telling me I was smart and funny and he loved what I had written that day, and how he always looked forward to talking to me. Vs. my then actual boyfriend, who isolated me from my friends and got off on hurting me in not good ways, and made me feel like I deserved it. And he hated that I was talking to husband-to-be, hated it. It actually resulted in an argument where he told me (again) that I was lucky to have him because no one else would ever want me because I was so ugly. But instead of backing down like I normally did, I stormed off thinking to myself, “fuck him, who the fuck does he think he is, I bet ETD would appreciate a picture of my tits” and, well, I was right.
…Anyway.
That went on for a while and I eventually found the emotional strength to break up permanently with Asshole and moved on with my life. I started going to college, made new friends…and still lived for those little moments when the $1 text message would show up every morning that would say “Good morning gorgeous :)” and tried to convince myself I had no feelings for him beyond enjoying his attention and our meaningful conversations about love, life and the universe as a whole. We even talked to each other about other partners we had, we were just…the constant in each other’s variables.
And then my family decided they were going to go on vacation in the USA and we thought, hey great, lets meet up. He needed a friendly date for a wedding, and I needed to not spend three weeks in Florida with my family, great, sure lets meet up.
So I’m getting off the flight from Florida and I want to vomit. Like for real, I almost throw up in a trashcan I am so nervous which is ridiculous. Because I am meeting my friend. Sure he knew all my deepest darkest fears and all my fragile hopes in dreams. And what I looked like without my clothes on. But it wasn’t like this was a Big Deal or anything (haha, right…right? guys?…right?)
So I’m hightailing it through the airport, checking my phone to see if he messaged me back after I texted him from the plane, and I make it to baggage claim, and there’s a lull in foot traffic and the people part—and of course he has his back to me—and I get this overwhelming sense of calm wash over me. But he also very firmly has his back to me, and because I’m an absolute gremlin I decided to sneak up behind him because that’s the kind of person I am. Except that didn’t work because he turned at the last minute and suddenly I’m off the ground and we’re hugging and laughing and it takes over a full minute or more before either one of us actually says anything and when we do it’s this giddy breathless rush of hi/hello…you look, haha, no you go first, no YOU…how was your flight/drive, here let me get your bag/no it’s okay I, well if you insist…
I’d like to say it was love at first sight but I’m not that much of a romantic. I mean it was something at first sight because on the drive back to his parents house we didn’t say anything, we just stared at each other, holding hands the entire way. Which was very bad because he was meant to be watching the road not me. But we survived, made it into his parents house, put my suitcase into the guest room, went downstairs to get a glass of water and managed about maybe…two minutes?? of polite conversation?? And then we just sort of launched ourselves at each other and have been largely inseparable (emotionally speaking) ever since.
It was one of the best weeks of my life, and I finally knew we had something more special than what I had allowed myself to believe it was. And not just because the final Harry Potter book came out that week and he let me read his copy before he did, but I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a big part of it.
Flash forward through five years of me finishing college and only being able to see each other once a year and trying to figure out where our relationship was going, (we like each other, we decide, we really really like each other and we’re good for each other and we love each other, maybe we could make this whole thing work if we try really hard) and he proposed via a rhyming treasure hunt and a mug of tea.
A year and a bit later we were married in Scotland, with our friends and family around us, and a sizable chunk of Internet friends who had been following our blatant denial for years, cheering us on from the sidelines. And now we’re here, five years married in May, still holding hands in the car when we shouldn’t, still very glad with the life choices we made that brought us here. Even on the bad days.
Which I figure must mean we’re doing something right.
What are you talking about, that was exactly as romantic as I was thinking
I guess, when it comes down to it, neither ETD or I are particularly romantic people. We do romantic things, but we’re not Romantic, not in the storybook ideal way other people mean when they think of Romance.
We don’t believe in one true loves, or fate, even if we now couldn’t imagine not being together for rest of our lives. And while others seem happy to attribute our relationship to the inevitability of fate, we’re under no illusions that it was bloody hard work and perseverance that got us to where we are today. And it’ll be bloody hard work that keeps us going too. Relationships take work, even the happy ones—especially, the happy ones.
And I guess, sometimes, I’ve been told that’s not a particularly romantic way of thinking. Which maybe it isn’t. But I do know it’s love. And that’s a great deal more important.
I stumbled across this. Loved the story.
