Love at first sight can take time. Write it anyway.

I remember him introducing himself in the elevator with his friend, thinking he’d said his name was Scott.  My mom still sometimes calls him Scott, so did his grandma.  Oddly enough even I do once in awhile.  I’ve never dated a Scott.  Or even known that many.  It was early in our first semester of college.  I didn’t write this encounter in my journal because you all know how many people you meet during the first few weeks at college.  How are you to know which ones you’ll wish you had written your first impressions of?

We ended up in the same group of friends.  My roommate and I hiked with him and his friend not long after we’d first met to the Y on the mountain near campus and ended up talking for hours that night.  (I went back to my journal to make sure I’m getting this right.  You know how your memory and real life don’t always match up, so I had to be sure.)  But we just kind of had an inkling that this could be something.  Nothing crazy, just kind of felt a connection, a familiarity, in sync, comfortable and like our goals meshed.  It would take time, of course, but we’d had a good night.  We were definitely not head over heels in love with each other, anything like that.  We just felt relieved that we’d each found a confidant among the 30,000 students on BYU’s campus.

He’d eat with me in the cafeteria at 6:15 every morning (I had Spanish at 7; he didn’t have class till 8, so nice of him).  Our group of friends met every day for lunch and dinner.  We studied together.  We went to Homecoming together.  I had a boyfriend back at home.  We became best friends.  His parents were concerned about him spending so much time with a girl from California.  If only they had known what a non-traditional California girl I really was; they had nothing to worry about.

Over Christmas break I had some time to think.  I broke up with my boyfriend and had a great second semester with Todd.  He came out over the summer.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to be this serious.  He left for Norway that fall.  We didn’t make any commitments; we figured we’d just see where things were when he got back, but we wrote every week.

I had fun while he was gone, and yet my heart was still tethered to his.  I couldn’t properly date anyone without feeling disloyal to Todd.  And yet I felt it best to continue on with my life and not sit home pining and waiting to see what would happen.   So I did date and made some great friends.  We talked on the phone at the end of those two years and were anxious to see what kind of reunion we’d have.

His family flew me out to Chicago for a week at Christmas, but we didn’t know what to expect the first time we’d see each other again.  I thought I’d know for sure one way or another at the airport.  But it wasn’t like that.  We had to slowly pick up and spend time together again.  I loved being with his family, seeing the pretty Christmas lights and their city zoo together.  I loved playing games with all his siblings and learning what fondue on New Year’s Eve was all about.  It was enchanting to see him with his family.  By the end of that week we were pretty sure we had a future together.

But when we got back to school my old life was juxtaposed with expectations of a future life with Todd.  I can’t tell you the mixed up feelings I had.  We had one week at the beginning of that semester that was just hell.  It was one of the worst weeks of both of our lives and we couldn’t figure out what was going on.  So we spent it apart, trying to sort through our unanticipated feelings.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to give up my freedom and all the fun I’d been having to settle down and spend the rest of my life with just one guy.  We were still so young.  Weren’t we supposed to have fallen in love?  Weren’t we supposed to have glanced shyly at each other across a crowded room?  Wasn’t there some rule about love at first sight, along with a kind of stomach sensation?  Isn’t that what real relationships leading to marriage look like?  How could our friendship ever be the start of something that important?  What kind of love story would that be?  All we’d ever felt was calm and peaceful when we’d talked about our future together.  Not much of a fairy tale romance.  That Friday night he went to do his own thing, and I spent a long, long time talking with my aunt.  That was the turning point and I recognized for certain that I had a good thing.  Not just a good thing, one of the best things that had ever happened to me.  I knew it was right.  And I couldn’t wait to tell him. 

 

I hadn’t dated a ton, but I had taken note of qualities that were important to me.  Any hint of arrogance was a deal breaker, the biggest kind of turn-off.  Why do so many otherwise attractive guys have to tarnish their images by being arrogant?  I’ve never understood that.  Over the years I’ve come to see the insecurity behind that kind of charade, but there’s nothing more attractive to me than humility and quiet confidence in a person.  That was and still is what I love most about Todd.  That combination really stood out to me because it seemed so rare when we were that age.  As we’ve all gotten older, I’ve found more and more people who have finally settled down and honed these traits, but I guess I just got lucky to have found a guy who was pretty content with who he was even back then.  I felt like I was home when we were together; I didn’t have to try to be anything other than what I was.  He brought out the best in me and accepted me.  I am so lucky still.  There’s more to the story, but that’s a beginning.  It just took me a long, long time to be ok with the fact we had a different kind of story, a friendship so strong and tight that we didn’t even realize it had turned to love.

You all have your own love stories.  Maybe you grew up as neighbors, were in the same school or town.  Maybe he was your friend’s brother.  Maybe she waited tables with you, maybe he worked down the hall.  I know it’s been a long time.  I hope you’ve written it down.  Most of us haven’t; we were too busy living it.  Even if it was such a gradual thing you hardly know where it started, take a minute.  Remember it.  Re-live the memory.  Write down what you remember.  The very beginnings.  It’s too hard to remember it all.  I know.  But write what you do remember.  Better now than when you’re 101.

It will do more than you think.  You’ll have written your first story.  A fairy tale that came true.  Your kids will love hearing you tell it to them.  It will be there for your grandkids.  It will stay alive even when you’re not around to tell it.  More than that even, it will rekindle your love for each other right now.  You’ll remember the feelings of a young heart, why you couldn’t bear to say good night, what prompted you to buy stuffed toys for another adult, why it was worth it to go days and weeks on maybe 4 hours of sleep a night.  You’ll want to look at him again.  It will be different this time.  Because it will be the same as back then.

Maybe your love story started out promising.  The ending wasn’t so great.  I say write it anyway.  It’s a part of you.  What would our stories be if we only wrote the good parts?  Boring.  Unbelievable.  Less than the truth.  No one’s life is that good.  Maybe you learned some things along the way.  Maybe your once broken heart is stronger now.  Writing it down can help you see how you’ve grown, that you have the capacity to love again.

Start with a few short sentences.  Where you first saw her and what you thought.  How he became someone special.  Your first kiss.  How you knew she was the one.  It’s a memory worth keeping.  And so it’s worth writing it down.