How He Became My Everything

A winter snowstorm kept me inside on a night in December. Inside the building where group was being held. I wasn’t really searching for anyone that night. I didn’t need anyone, I was perfectly fine alone. Until I saw him. I didn’t know his name, but I wanted him.

Eyes like the ocean and a smile that could melt the hardest of hearts. Here, I thought, is a man I could become friends with…maybe even date when the time came. But how to approach him? You can’t come on strong when you’ve been staring at him from across the room. What do you even say? “I’m falling for you and want you to be mine?” No, no, that won’t work.

So I waited for my chance and found one when I saw him sitting alone. I slowly approached him and carefully sat down. I didn’t know what to say, but he started to speak. Shy, hesitant and yet so inviting. There was mystery hanging around his shoulders like a cloak, a cloak I wanted to yank off him so I could see everything that made him…well, him. But I couldn’t do that. Things like this took time.

So we talked. About the poetry I had up on my phone. The light from my phone nearly blinding us but I don’t really think either of us noticed. He kept stealing glances at me, glances that I didn’t understand, that I couldn’t will myself to understand yet. All I’d known in years past was heartbreak: how could you understand something that you’d never experienced?

As the months passed, my walls crumbled, and my heart became shaken. He shook me unlike anyone I’d ever known. Every time I felt his presence, my breath slipped away, and I choked on my words. I’m sure he thought I was crazy and honestly, I did too. I guess those old sayings about love making you think different that I’d heard over the years really were true.

Love made me notice how much bluer his eyes were in the sunlight. How his smile outshone everyone else’s. How soft and fluffy his hair looked. How my fingers twitched at my side, unable to play with it, especially when it looked golden under the summer sun. How often I found myself staring at his lips, wishing I could feel them under mine.

Then, I started noticing his glances. I could hear my friends whispering to themselves, questioning which of us would make the first move. I tried to make the first move, only to be rejected, so I sat back and decided to wait. I’d already made up my mind of who I wanted to be my boyfriend, but he needed more time, so I gave him that.

In the months leading up to April of 2019, things that I couldn’t understand before started to make sense. I understood what those glances he gave me meant. I understood why I couldn’t keep myself away. He was my magnet: no matter how many times I tried to escape, I always found myself attached to his side.

The day of April 1st, 2019, started like any other. I woke up, showered, and spent most of my day playing on my laptop and keeping my dog occupied. He was in Florida, on vacation with his family. We texted throughout the day and promised to facetime later that night. Everything seemed perfectly normal. I had no reason to believe that our facetime call would end any differently than most other nights.

When the call came, we did our usual routine of discussing the events of the day. He’d gone boating and fishing with his family, and had enjoyed a nice dinner and a walk. His skin was tan from a week of being in the sun and he had tired eyes that shone like diamonds.

He then asked to talk about our friendship. This was nothing usual. We talked about our friendship more often than was needed. I didn’t think anything of it.

He told me next that he wanted to level up. My heart pounded against my chest when those words exited his lips, but I still couldn’t comprehend it. The question in my eyes asked the same question my lips did: What Do You Mean?

He then, with trembling voice and shaking hands, said that he wanted us to date. He asked me, in the most direct way possible, to be his girlfriend.

I automatically said yes. What else could my response have been? I’d been waiting for this for a year and 4 months. I’d been patiently and anxiously waiting for the day when he’d admit to his true feelings and ask me out. I’d seen it in his eyes, heard it in his voice, felt it in the ways his hands grabbed mine. He just needed to admit it to himself.

There are days when my reality still seems like a fairy tale. When my eyes open to see a text from him or see him on my phone screen as my background, I ask myself if it’s real. I didn’t think men like him existed. Or, if they did exist, they weren’t meant for people like me. People like me who’ve been hurt and torn into a million pieces with nowhere to run or hide.

He’s not someone I want to hide from. I still am scared to show him my most vulnerable side, but he’s patient, gently encouraging me each step of the way.

Each door he opens, each kiss I receive, each call I get, each smile I’m given, lead me more towards the thought of marriage with him. We’ve discussed kids, we’ve talked about marriage, and we’ve talked about the future. Suddenly, I’m not afraid to wake up in the mornings, because
I want to live for my future with him. A future with a man who’s the imperfect version of Prince Charming.

I’ve been asked who my ideal man is, and I used to not have an answer, but now, I just point to him. Most girls have the idea of a perfect man, but perfect men don’t exist. Perfect people don’t exist.

He’s my ideal man because he admits to mistakes; he says I’m sorry and means it, he says that he’ll do better. I don’t want a perfect man, no, I want a real man, and that’s who I have by my side.

My younger self most likely wouldn’t understand the reason why I would want an imperfect man, and honestly, I don’t think I’d expect her too. She didn’t need to understand, because she wasn’t ready to understand. The me now does understand…because she herself isn’t perfect, she has flaws and cracks and scars. She needed someone to heal so that she could heal herself.