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so that happened

Wise Men Say…

May 22, 2017

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There is one teeny, tiny thing I neglected to mention in all of my rambling about Mexico.

I got engaged. We got engaged! There was an engagement?

Basically, what I’m saying is that there was a very happily accepted proposal, and I know that makes it sound a little like a business deal, but in actual fact it was both completely unexpected and eerily perfect, and not at all like a business deal.

More like a movie.

Or a telenovela.

I don’t talk about Scrubs much here because Scrubs is quite a private person, but we have been together for… a while. A long while. About eight years now. That sounds like a veritable eon, but it really doesn’t feel like it. The other day we were out having dinner and across the way from us a couple were sitting, sipping cocktails, having an awkward first date.

“Yeah, so I play the oboe,” the girl said.

“Oh right. That’s interesting.” Said the boy, sounding not at all interested.

“It’s quite time-consuming.” Brief pause as the boy digested this bit of information. She forged ahead. “I also play hockey.”

“Oh?” Said the boy. “Like, on grass?”

“Yeah, on astroturf. Sometimes we play on gravel though.”

Scrubs and I locked eyes over our potato wedges.

“Thank God we never had to do that whole thing,” whispered Scrubs, sounding like we narrowly avoided death by immolation or radioactive waste. I nodded in grave agreement.

It’s true that we never had that awkward first date. Timing, or kismet, or any number of factors combined to create a moment in which we simply connected like magnets. At the time that my world collided with his, I had passed through phases of singledom; I had been sad and lonely, then disappointed and bored, and (eventually) made it to the promised land of consummate enjoyment. After a rough patch of heartbreak I had finally discovered my happy place. I had found my groove, and I was making the most of it; everything was fun, and light-hearted, and there was a lot of dancing to bad music (there is still a lot of dancing to bad music but these days it’s mostly in the comfort of my own home). Then, that one night, our little world bubbles bumped into each other for no more than five minutes.

“I know you! Or … I know someone that knows you?”

“Yeah! I was on foreign exchange with someone you know!”

“I have to go, but we should meet up sometime?”

“Yeah, for sure!”

…and that was it. It sounds ridiculous and impossible even to my own ears, but I still vividly remember sitting in my taxi home, tipsily thinking about him and feeling absolutely infuriated. I remember having this clear gut instinct of, “This guy is going to be Something Serious with a capital S, and just when I was starting to have so much fun! Why did Something Serious have to come along now? Why couldn’t I have had a bit longer to enjoy my groove?”

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Just like this, except that Scrubs is younger and better looking… And I’m not a man.

Worth it, though.

We never really went on a first date. We simply met up to hang out one day and then just… were. I found a new groove, a better groove than I’d ever even dared to hope for, and we’ve continued on like that up to now.

If I’m honest, I wasn’t expecting the proposal at all. It blindsided me to such an extent that I didn’t really have a serious think about what it truly meant until afterwards. I think I was in shock for the first couple of days. It took me a minute.

One night I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, and thought long and hard about it. I realised that even though I’d always felt like we were in it for the long-haul, this was actually a Big Deal; this was an official, public, no-screwing-around, it’s-you-and-me-against-the-world type promise. I know that may seem obvious. It is obvious. I mean, that’s really the whole proposal question when you think about it. I needed a moment for it to sink in though. I needed a moment to turn it over in my mind and examine it from every angle. Now not only am I an adult, but I’m an adult with a fiancé! I still can’t say it out loud without turning red.

Nothing has changed. We are the same as we were before. Nothing has changed, and yet something has. Before, I knew that we loved each other and now, I KNOW it.

… But I already knew it, so what’s the difference?

I can’t tell. There is a difference but it’s something so tiny and sharp that I can barely figure out what it is. Something so miniscule it’s invisible but I can feel it, so I know it’s there.

I could write a long, long post here about Scrubs. I could write about the many reasons why I love him, and how he makes me a better person, and all the ways he makes me smile. I could write about how I still feel the same about him now as I did that night that he threw me off my groove and knocked me right into a different (and completely unexpected) lane.

I could write about all of this and more, but as I said before, he’s a private person. He would hate that.

So I didn’t write about it.

Not in so many words.

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