If you know me with any sort of intimacy you know that saying I take a little while to wake up is kind of an understatement. I just don't like waking up in the morning. People often say that I don't like mornings, which is false, I love the beauty of the morning. I just don't like waking up. It's whatever. These were the things that I was thinking about on March 8th, 2008. It was 6 am when I woke up in my room in our old house, messy as usual. I had made Blove come sleep with me that night. I had closed the store last night, why on earth ice cream stores had to stay open till 10 pm would only become clear to me later. Rolling over, I convinced myself that I had five more minutes. It's always five more minutes, isn't it? 20 minutes later I HAD to get up or we were going to be late. And my mom and dad would start the annoying hassling to get me out the door. I threw on my favorite jeans, a red tank top that I would later decide was too low cut and give to Goodwill, and my favorite new hoody from this awesome new store in the mall, Forever 21, that was black and white and covered in sheet music. I bet everyone there will already think I go there. We had already sent in my deposit to hold my spot. I may as well suck it up, this is the path that God has brought me to, time to put on your pumps with the bows and see where I will be spending the next four years of my life.
I didn't shower. I did my make up in the car. We drove my beloved Billy down there. I rode in the back, car sick the whole way. We had to make it quick because I had to be at work at 5. We had to be in Belmont at 8 am. Even then I wondered why on earth a college would schedule its campus visits so early on a Saturday if students were the one's leading them. Some things become clearer from the inside.
We did a bunch of random stuff that I don't remember, unimportant things that I thought were so crucial. We ate lunch in the cafeteria, and all of the students called it the "caf" which I thought was horrible and sounded stupid, so I vowed then and there I would never call it that. Then, all of a sudden, there he was. The boy. That one. The one I had seen last week in the musical, when we came to spy on the theatre that I was clearly going to become the star of. The one that's cast bio had made my heart flutter. That was him.
We met up for tours and things. I supposed I should probably get a better idea of the lay out of campus if I was going to have to come to school here. There he was again, he volunteered to take a group for a tour. No time like the present I thought. I took my first steps toward my future husband without even knowing. Uhhhhh who does this other girl think she is? Listen sister I know he's hot stuff, but clearly I am way more outgoing than you are so I've got you beat. My first thoughts about my very best friend couldn't have been any farther from the truth.
I had no idea the impact that freezing, windy day in March would have on my life. When I woke up and debated brushing my teeth, I couldn't have convinced myself, that would be the day that I would meet the love of my life. But it was. That was the day. It was the day that God had ordained in the beginning of time and I ever so begrudgingly followed Him. That day with sweaty feet and freezing hands, I checked him out for the first time. I loved the way that he knew I was flirting with him but played it off because he wanted everyone to know he was serious about his work.
I also instantly knew that this tiny little girl who had ruined my alone time with the older actor and I would never be friends because she wasn't Catholic. Why was she even going to a Catholic school? I was so right about my soul mate, and so wrong about the girl who became my best friend. The only girl who I swear has access to my mind, who has literally been there since day one, and whose truthful tongue cuts like a knife right through my BS. What a loss I would have suffered if I had written her off the first of many times she third wheeled our "date".
The moral of the story is that March 8th, 2008 was nothing special to me when I woke up and it has in turn been one of the single most pivotal days of my life. God gave me two of the biggest blessings ever, no less than five minutes apart. I didn't have the cutest outfit on. My hair did not look beautiful, in fact it was probably greasy. But that was THE day. The day that girls dream of.
What a difference 5 years have made in all three of our maturity, understanding and in our love. Praise the Lord that I have grown past the judgement, the imagined superiority and the "Catholic" box. I praise Him for the ways that I have changed and in the ways I have stayed the same, I can still spot him in a crowded room and my heart skips a beat. Every time I look at him, I still hear the whisper in my heart that I did the first time, "that's him."
I told my mom on the ride home that I was going to marry that boy. She said, "I know." Seventy days from now, I will.
