The man who I am writing about today isn’t my husband, and I’m definitely not on my death bed with any sort of illness.
Let me tell you a story of a real modern day romance that started off with emojis, gifs and all.
A boy and a girl met in a big city.
Her first impression of him was that he was good-looking, but that he was also a trap. He trapped her like someone who ran out of good rebuttals during a friendly debate.
They saw each other on four occasions.
The first, the night they met. The girl stuck like glue to the idea that holding hands and telling him he really needed to take out the trash was more intimate than intercourse. Leaving him, she thought “I’m never going to see this person again,” and it notably left a funny aftertaste in her mind. There should be a word for that feeling.
The second, they went for cocktails. He told her he wanted to take her on a trip and she told herself that he was crazy, but so was she for wanting to go.
The third, she was putting sunscreen on his sweaty face, they hiked for miles until they got to the beach and he carried her around in the ocean like a princess on a throne.
And the last night she saw him, she sat on many curbs, dressed up, packing a liquor store in her body and a cigarette cabinet in her lungs. It was that night where they sat on a curb and she cried and told him that she loved him like the silly girl she was – acting like some amnesiac who forgot that telling a boy how she felt was like getting shampoo in your eye.
About this boy… let me tell you, I know all about him but also nothing at all – and that’s why he’s one big question mark.
He’s effortlessly funny; he tickles me in all of my sensitive spots without touching me.
He’s intelligent; he knows how to work his way around a presentation he never prepared for and talk about real estate like he’s the Monopoly Man.
He likes to experience new things; he likes the unknown, new countries, new places, new faces.
He makes me feel as happy as a honey cake horse (Honigkuchenpferd), which is both the most perfect and imperfect way to describe how he makes me feel. It makes no sense to describe something that makes all the sense in the world.
He can make being in a lecture feel like I’m enjoying a sip of champagne at a swanky little art gallery and I don’t even like champagne.
This is the kind of guy he is: he’s made me breakfast in bed, helped a stranger carry furniture into the back of a truck, helped drive a getaway vehicle for a marijuana dealer – okay, just joking with that one, but he totally would!
He’s the kind of guy I’d make a Tinder profile for, pay however many dollars to find him geographically and “superlike” him just to confess my ultimate digital love for him.
That’s the stuff I know about him.
What I don’t know is how I went from feeling like I was going to lose him to feeling like I won an Oscar for Best Boyfriend nine months later.
There are several things I don’t know how he does from almost 4000 miles away. He makes me feel at home, makes me feel like Spider(wo)man when I’m going through an uphill battle, makes me feel like the Energizer Bunny and makes me feel like the opposite of lost: found.
That’s what else I don’t know about him – I don’t know how he does it.