7 Years Ago
Joel & I recently stopped for dinner in the college town we met at 7 years ago. We heard there was a new brewery in town so we had to go. We immediately recognized it as the old sandwich shop we'd go to on paycheck Friday – $8 sandwiches were a luxury back then, for real – and asked our waitress if she knew the name of it before it became a brewery.
"I don't know, I wasn't around here then."
Of course not because you were taking your first driving lesson then and damnit why can't my cutoff jeans look that great on me?! What I'm trying to say is she made us feel old. How has this much time passed? Weren't we just here with last night's gossip as a side to Reubens and turkey clubs?
We sat out on the patio and as I looked around, I was met with a feeling you can only get by going to a familiar place as a different person than you were when you first stumbled into it.
Seven years ago, I pulled up to this tiny town with whatever would fit into my mom's Jeep. I moved in with a roommate I met that day. We made a champagne toast to wherever the year would take us. We weren't concerned with making plans but riding the wave until something came our way (a good lesson still). I had an abundance of freedom I didn't know how to handle so a string of bad decisions taught me who I was and who I wasn't.
Fortunately, the champagne toast led me to a front porch where the most confident and carefree guy I ever saw sat. I had a microlens to him, no idea of the other names I was being introduced to. Butterflies fluttered throughout my entire body. I knew he would be a part of my life from that moment forward. It's such a difficult moment to describe. I've been trying to find the words ever since but they always fall short of how I really feel.
I'll try again...
It's like I discovered a secret that the Universe was waiting for me to stumble upon. Like all the moments I wondered why the hell the thing I wanted to work out wasn't working out, it responded,
“Just be patient. I promise there's something better down the path. You're just not ready for it yet.”
On that porch it hit me.
Oh, he's the "something better down the path". This is the one you meant for me to meet & now I know with everything in my body that this is who you were guiding me to.
I wanted to know everything about Joel. I wanted to be surrounded by his laugh, his goofiness, watch the way people were immediately at ease in his presence. So I followed my desire with the strongest faith I've ever had and I'm still following it. It reminds me of what can blossom with hope and faith amidst uncertainty.
We drank our crappy beers on the patio of the new brewery and relived those years when we were drinking crappy beers on the old porch at Joel's house. We were looking at our beginning with new eyes, as partners two months away from making a promise to each other that is rooted back to my first butterfly moment.
"Can you believe we're here?" he asked.
I thought back to the toast. The front porch. The way his eyes lit up because he knew it too.
"Yes, yes I can."
All the love, Em
Image c/o Tifani Lyn
