My Love Story- Or How I Got Past the Fear

Hi everyone, I know I promised some of you that I would share my love story. I had an open space on the blog today, so I decided to tell the story of how my fiance and I met and fell in love. This actually was inspired by Jamie's post recently.

It wasn't some love at first sight thing. That would have been really weird considering the fact that we were only kids when we first met. I was ten and he was eight. We met at this group for kids in wheelchairs. At the time, I only used my wheelchair sparingly, but he used his a lot more. We remained friends for a long time, but nothing ever really happened between us. I think we were both terrified of losing our friendship.

It was the day after Christmas in 2002 when he asked me out for the first time. We did go out for about six weeks, but then he proposed to me. Yeah, I was sixteen & he was fourteen and he proposed. I freaked out and ended it. I had goals and dreams and getting engaged in high school was not something I wanted.

Two years later we found ourselves drawn back to each other. He and his family came to my high school graduation, I introduced him as my boyfriend and we were excited to give this another try. That didn't last long. About a month later, I broke it off with him. I wanted to start college single and I had high hopes that I would meet someone there.

In 2006, I was invited to his high school graduation as well as the graduation party his family was hosting. I went because we were old friends and he had come to mine. I thought it was important that I go.

We didn't speak again for four years.

In March 2010, his mother contacted my mom to tell her that his longtime girlfriend died while awaiting a heart transplant. I contacted him to express my condolences and from that point on, we were in frequent contact. 

January 2011, my mom left an abusive marriage and since I was still living at home, I went with her. Chris was a wonderful source of support for me and he was wonderfully sweet and kind to my mom and to my brother, who was ten at the time.

We didn't start seeing each other again until July 2011. I was absolutely terrified to go through this cycle again. I respected him too much to do this to him again. So we moved very slowly and for that, I thank him. Not a lot of guys would be as patient with me as he was.

Marriage has always been something I wanted, but I've never really had any marriage role models. My mom's been married & divorced twice (both assholes) My grandmother is on her 3rd marriage and my uncle has yet to be married at all. I have very little contact with my bio dad's family, but I know out of all of them, only one couple has managed to stay married (they celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary this week) So I was frightened that I didn't have what it takes to make a marriage work. Chris's parents have been together for 30 years and no one in his family has been divorced.

When my mom suffered a work injury last September, he called or texted me every day to see how she was doing. He was always willing to do something to help us out. Even if he just ordered dinner for us and had it delivered.

It took 8 months for my mom to actually have surgery on her injury. 8 months of worrying how we were gonna pay the bills. 8 months of her being in constant pain. That also included an unlawful termination by her (now) former employer. Through it all, Chris stuck by me, supported me and cared for me. I could not have asked for more.

The day of her surgery, we had to be there at 10:30a.m. Without even asking me, Chris showed up at the surgery center with a coffee for me and some herbal tea for my grandmother. I remember looking at him when we were sitting in the waiting room and I just knew. This was it. He was the one I wanted to spend forever with. I told him I loved him on that day.

He asked my mom for her blessing to marry me two weeks later, even though it wasn't really necessary. It was something he wanted to do, so I didn't argue. We went out, we searched for a ring. I picked out my top 3 and he picked out the actual ring. He popped the question over Chinese food and a movie. So completely US. Simple, unflashy and private.

We set our wedding date for October 10th, 2015