Striving For Our Happily Ever After

When you start dating someone, regardless of your history, there is certain dating protocol that needs to be followed.  You can't express your feelings too soon, or call/text too much.  You can't expect them to spend every day with you, or want to even spend the night for the first while assuming you have separate homes. So you walk on eggshells.  Making sure the most that comes out of your mouth is the occasional "I like spending time with you." And not being the first to text and waiting the appropriate 15 minutes to respond as to not seem too eager to talk to them. 

Ryan and I had been together for just a few weeks when he helped me put up my Christmas tree.  We were halfway through untangling blue and white lights when he said "Next year when we put up the tree..." I believe he finished that sentence with something about it being decorated in the theme of Dr. Who.  But shortly after he said "next year" I stopped listening and immediately started to focus on my breathing as to not pass out.  Next year? Next year?! As in, like, you see yourself dating me past New Year's and then another 11 months after that?  

It always came as a shock to me when he would talk about our future in the beginning, so confidentially as though he'd already read our story and knew what would happen. One of our first dates we agreed on the name of our first son.  The more comfortable he became with talking about our future the more I started to let my feelings slip out and threw caution and protocol to the wind. 

As time went on I was sharing everything, except that one big "L" word that I swallowed down basically every minute as I was feeling it, but I'd be damned if I would be the first to say it.  So instead I would subliminally slip it into conversation by saying things like "I really love you in that sweater." "Cook dinner? I'd love you to!". New Year's Eve he finally broke down and said it first. I WIN!

The point is is that sometimes it still seems really premature to talk about the future of our relationship the way we do.  And it even seems a little crazy that he is moving in so soon and that our cat and dog coexist, and that we've decided on a wedding cake, and the theme of our engagement photos.  We don't talk about them as "ifs" we talk about them as "whens".  And it feels so comfortable and so right and so exciting.  I feel like it's the security and confidence in a romantic relationship that I've always searched for but was never quite sure if it could actually exist.

All of this fairy tale (or maybe let's just call it healthy) relationship goodness would be put to the test a few weeks ago when we attended a friend of his wedding.  He was standing up in the wedding, so I got to be a plus one to eat, drink and spend more time with his friends I've already grown to adore.  The night before the wedding the groomsmen plus me were hitting the bottle pretty hard when I caught myself saying things like "At our wedding..." or "When we get married..." All of a sudden it occurred to me that us talking about our future between him and I is one thing, but what if I am crossing a boundary by sharing this shared confidence in our future with his bros? 

We snuck outside for a moment alone and I asked him if it freaked him out that I was speaking so candidly about a potential marriage, children etc. in front of his friends.  His response was simple and perfect.  "If we don't have something to strive for, than what's the point? If I didn't see that being us and where we end up then why would we be together at all?  I wouldn't talk about it to you if I wouldn't talk about it in front of my friends" A timid, doe-eyed me just looked up and asked "So, it's me you are striving for?" And he said yes. 

Needless to say I spent the rest of the weekend comparing their wedding to the one we strive to have ourselves.  And a few days later I even boldly said "When we get married..." to his mother.  The security of knowing that someone's end goal is you is the greatest feeling in the world.  It can't be bought.  It can only be shown.  And it makes my heart feel safe every day we move forward striving in this relationship together towards our happily ever after.

Remembering To Forget Katie Keller (To Hell and Back and Better)

A lot of people have been encouraging me to start writing again lately. I miss it. I've wanted to come back for quite some time now.  But the idea of just jumping back into telling the story of my life seems more and more daunting as time passes from the last time I checked in with all of you. I feel like I need to find a way to catch you up to speed before I can resume sharing social, personal, relationship, sexual, and otherwise commentary on my 20sSomething life. I would love to call this a brief summary of where we'd left off.  But I have a feeling there will be nothing brief about it.  I will say that once we get this out of the way I will have a blank canvas to start drawing on again. It's just the last few scribbled-on pages need to be torn away before we can get there.  So here goes: 

So my Dad died.  And everything got real foggy.  It was the most intense, disconnected, real, unreal experience of my life.  I remember some things very vividly.  Like my siblings and I embracing on the front lawn, almost in slow motion, holding each other and crying minutes after he took his last breath.  But the day of the actual funeral is a blur of PBRs in the parking lot, Beatles tunes, and a late-night Sonic run. I stopped writing around then because I didn't have anything to say.  I didn't know what or how to feel, so I certainly didn't know what to write. 

After a few months of floating, surviving the days, things started getting weird.  I was receiving cryptic text messages from an unknown number explaining that my boyfriend was cheating on me.  I don't know if I really believed him, or if I was just too sad about everything else to question him, but I assumed it was just a crazy ex of his and let it go.  Well, my lack of response to these texts was not okay for this unknown person on the other side of this unknown number. So texts turned into phone calls. But like, a psychotic amount of phone calls.  We're talking 60 missed calls in under 10 minutes.

With the situation with this person I didn't even have so much of a name of continued to escalate, my boyfriend and I finally decided to go to the cops.  Over the time that we were filing police reports and getting the ball in motion for a restraining order, she had shown up at my house, my work, had taken video of me inside my work, followed him and I around to numerous events and outings. It was scary and it took most of this happening before all the pieces fell apart and my boyfriend admitted that he had been cheating on me with this woman for the vast majority of our relationship.

I didn't want to give up on the relationship though. I was still hurting from everything else, and I didn't feel like hurting more by ending the relationship or fighting to make it work.  So I just lived in it.  But as time wore on, and the truth revealed itself, I had found some of the things he did were plain disgusting.  He held me with one hand while texting her with the other from my father's funeral to make plans.  And those nights that he was "out with friends" he was taking her on dates.  He even shared with her some of my deepest fears and most intimate secrets that no one outside my immediate circle of people has the right to know.  It just all became too much.  It hurt too much. 

As a result of being punched in the stomach with a bunch of sick realities of what he had been doing to me, I started to evaluate if I'd ever been capable of doing this to someone else.  I couldn't imagine I had, at least not to this degree. I mean, not in the midst of losing a loved one.  But if on any level if I was capable of being so deceitful and going to such lengths to disguise my lies.  The only time that I could really remember back to was my senior year high school boyfriend Ryan.  I had an immediate sinking feeling as I remembered that I did cheat on him, albeit we were 18 years old, I cheated on him, he found out, and shortly after he ended the relationship. (I could have maybe learned a few things from his timeline versus mine).

So I sat down one Friday night and wrote an email. I didn't know if the email would be found.  If it would be read, acknowledged, and I was most certain it wouldn't warrant a response.  I wrote an email to Ryan explaining that I looked back at what I had done to him and that it was completely wrong and that I have learned and grown since then, and that I hoped that at some point along the way he could forgive me.  And if not, just know that I was sorry for what I had done and any pain that I may have caused.  I said I hoped he was finding happiness and his life was going well and I signed off.

About an hour later, to my surprise, he responded.  He said it was long in the past, that all people can do is grow and try to be better each day.  He said he had made his fair-share of mistakes and he'd let go of any anger years ago.  My heart immediately felt lighter.  It was as though knowing my sin was forgiven could make me start to heal the wound of what was done to me.  But not with someone, like Ryan said, who wasn't trying to be better each day.  So I ended my relationship with Jason.

A week later after a long series of emails and text messages, I boldly asked Ryan if he'd like to grab a drink sometime.  We had that drink on Thursday, November 13th.  We went on a few dates after that, and he didn't kiss me until the third time we hung out.  Which made me crazy but led to the greatest kiss of my life.  It wasn't like kissing him back in high school.  It was like kissing someone new, better, but in a familiar place. I'm pretty sure I floated away from his face after that kiss. And he's made me float with every kiss since.

We consider our actual anniversary to be in December, as that's when his roommate at the time awkwardly called us boyfriend and girlfriend and we agreed to it.  But since about November 14th and a 1/2 I knew I had found the one that every sad blog has led me to.  Including this one.  I have a feeling deep in my gut that the just previously told story will be the last sad ending in the romantic life of Katie Keller. Every day with him I am reminded of those first few words he said to me about trying to be a better person every day.  And it's easy to want to be when you are with someone that treats you like you deserve to be the best version of yourself always.

April 27th marked the one year anniversary of my Dad passing.  It's been a whole year.  And in that year I've managed to shake the bad and start actively searching for and loving the good.  Both inside of me and around me in my life. An in just 14 short days Ryan and I will share our first home together with a cat and a dog and a real, uncomplicated, simple, true and faithful love.  And I know without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that my Dad would be elated for me (mainly to have someone else around to do the guy things in my life) but because I am being treated the way he'd always hoped for. And standing on my own two feet proudly all the while.

So here we are, folks.  Death, affairs, police and restraining orders, emails to long-lost boyfriends, first kisses, and first homes. You can't say I haven't been busy.  Or at least, as always, entertaining to watch. It's time to start putting my heart back on paper.  Not for you, but for me.  Because it's finally strong enough for it.

Until next time...