Garden Variety Neurosis

So one month ago today, I experienced the most wonderful first date with the most wonderful man I have ever met. It was the most perfect first date, better than I ever imagined a first date could be.

Harold and I met last fall, through a website called Plenty of Fish. It was a free dating site that a friend of mine told me about, and I figured...what the heck? I had no high expectations, as I had been on many an online dating service, and never met anyone there that I actually wanted to pursue anything with in real life. However, I figured I might catch a fish worth keeping at Plenty of Fish, so I gave it a shot.

Harold and I started emailing shortly after I joined. However, I had stipulated in my email that I only wanted to meet men within 75 miles of my zip code (a stipulation I would later learn Harold had to work hard to get around in order to communicate with me...), so while I was interested in Harold, I concluded he just lived too far away from me. So, he went his way and I went mine. We kept in touch, but pursuing anything more than what we already had was not a thought in our minds at the time.

After a few months, our roads lead us back to each other. We started emailing each other on a regular basis, then we started talking online. We soon began talking on the phone, and we would talk for hours. It is still not at all unusual for our phone calls to last anywhere from 2 to 4 hours. Anyway, the more we wrote and talked and learned about each other, the more it was clear that there was so much more there than we saw before.

We wanted to meet. We talked about a few ideas for when and where to meet, and then the most wonderful thing happened. Bob came out to play! Bob, who only comes out to play every couple of years, was going to be playing at Short's Brewery. It seemed like the perfect place for Harold and I to meet for the first time. If nothing else, we would at least have good music, right?

I remember feeling so incredibly excited and nervous as the day approached. I knew what to expect from him up to that point, but there were so many variables that would come into play once we met in person. What if there was no chemistry? What if we just didn't gel as well face to face? With nervous anticipation, I finally met him.

It was amazing. It absolutely could not have been more perfect. Once I realized Harold was not "slow" (there is a funny story behind that, which I will share someday), we had a wonderful night. The ambience was perfect, the conversation was captivating, and we shared incredibly intimate moments as we wrote our thoughts down in my journal. Now our first date is immortalized in writing...I read those words now, and we were both so beautifully shy yet raw in our expressions. It was, and is, a wonderful thing.

We said goodbye that night, knowing that something very important had just begun between us. In the month that has passed since, we've been on more dates, spent more time talking on the phone, emailing, text messaging, and learning each other. It has been an inexpressibly wonderful month, and I look forward to many, many more months...all of which will be inexpressibly wonderful in their own ways as our relationship grows and changes over time. Right now, we are in that sunshine-and-lollipops, "getting to know you" stage, with an ever-deepening appreciation for each other, growing to cherish each other more deeply with each passing day. We are savoring every beautiful moment of this journey.

I am thankful for every heartache I've had before meeting Harold, because it has made me able to love him better and truly appreciate him for who he is and all that he means to me. He is the man that I never knew how much I missed until I found him, and now I can't imagine being without him.

Happy anniversary, sweetie