Then we played some Wiffle Ball, because we are also Wiffle Ball people.
This is where I met Brian. On a ledge, just outside of a hotel in Iowa City. He was sitting just as he is in this picture (taken over one year later), wearing blue, with his head bowed towards the ground. He looked up, I closed the gap between us, and we hugged.
There is little to say about our relationship that I haven’t already said one hundred times over. About two weeks after we met, Brian made the drive to St. Louis - where I was still living - and we started dating. I took him to a Cardinals game, we had root beer floats at Fitz’s, we went for a walk in the sweltering heat. He met most of my family the next day and I kissed him through the car window before he left for Iowa City. We dated long distance until August, and I have seen him almost every day since.
Brian and I share a relationship based on love and mutual respect and comfort and consistency and friendship and effort. We share a relationship based on emails we once sent, each one ending with a different question - assuring a response. What’s your favorite cereal? What song always makes you cry? Did you trip at your graduation? We share a relationship built on constant laughter and constant growth. We share a relationship built on change, and willingness to explore that change.
On Sunday, Brian and I will have been dating for one year. And I’m torn between feeling as though I’ve been dating Brian for two weeks, and feeling as though Brian and I have never spent a moment, a year, apart. I can’t explain all the things I’ve learned over the past year, both about myself and him and us and life. Not every change I’ve made has stemmed from this relationship, but every change I’ve made has been supported by, and encouraged by, this relationship. And every bad day has been met with the reassurance that tomorrow might not necessarily be better, but that I will not have to face hardships alone.
We’re both very different people than we were one year ago. We’ve learned to work together. To think about another person when we make decisions. To plan for the future. To plan for tomorrow. And we still have that ever-evolving, ever-strengthening foundation, built on baseball and pizza and driving back and forth from Iowa City to St. louis, Iowa City to Madison and trust and love - so much love - and that first hug, and that ledge outside of a hotel in Iowa City.
Anonymous asked: How did you and your boyfriend meet?
The short answer: Tumblr.
The long answer: Brian met (a different) Sam on Readernaut, whose presence on Tumblr prompted him to make a Tumblr. And, because I talked quite a bit about baseball, he decided to follow me. We talked for the first time when I made a comment about Better Than Ezra’s album titled “Closer,” and Brian wrote an essay in response, detailing the greatness of that album track-by-track. Then, in October of 2009, I sent Brian an essay of mine, which he returned with comments (and a bad Cardinals pun). Then in February-ish, Brian noticed that Sondre Lerche was playing a show in Madison, which prompted him to ask me - on my Last.fm - where he would start if he were to begin listening to Lerche.
And because I’m a long-winded individual, I chose to email him in response - a decision that lead to daily emails (almost without fail) until mid-May.
Long-story-longer: I had made the decision - in the midst of all of this - to transfer to Iowa to study writing, and Brian, who graduated in May, applied for a job with the University around the same time. And then, um. We both headed to Iowa City for different reasons one Thursday - he in preparation for an interview, and me for transfer orientation - and we decided to meet up for dinner. And that was it.
So much had to fall into place, and if I start to question it, I start to freak out. But Brian and I ate lunch at a place that is no longer in existence and I acted disgusted when he chose regular fries over curly fries (and pleased when he changed his order from regular fries to curly fries). It was perhaps the only un-awkward first-time encounter with someone I’ve ever had in my life. It was hot and I wore jeans because I don’t like shorts. He wore blue. I gave him two hugs. It was perfect.
(Then, for our first date, I took him to Busch Stadium for a Cardinals / A’s game. He wore a Cubs shirt. You know.)
This is a good place, filled with good people.
Listen to this:
The closer we get to the thing we really want, the more resistance we will feel. We will feel some force pushing us away, the closer we get to some thing we think we really want. And for a lot of us that could be writing. Let’s be honest: it is not that hard to write. It’s not really that hard to type. It’s really hard to make something good when you’re writing.
It’s not that hard to do anything, really. But the problem is, if you start really, actually doing it instead of thinking about it, instead of, like, polishing your beret, if you actually start doing it? It’s scary. It’s scary - not to be a writer, anybody can call themselves a writer - it’s scary to write. And if you don’t believe that, ask yourself why so many people who try to do it all the time have such a problem sitting down and typing. And it’s not because typing is hard, it’s because getting close to that thing is scary.
Now is that related to fear of success? Maybe … because I think it still represents fear of change. People don’t like external stuff being forced on them, but they’re also not great at doing it themselves. Most of us tend to think that glass is always gonna be sitting there ready to have milk poured in it. Well, that glass is temporarily unbroken and your life is temporarily unbroken. So enjoy what it is for now, because change is not something that’s negotiable. And I think once you accept that, and once you accept the true, gut-wrenching scariness of the fact that you don’t have that much control over that much stuff, something like sitting down to write suddenly seems a lot easier than it used to.
The fear is what keeps us scurrying to familiar problems. I think most of us would rather have familiar fear than the potential of an alien anxiety. Fear is going, “There’s a bear out there!” And anxiety is going, “There might be a bear out there. Sometime.” Anxiety is based not in a thing that’s there right now and threatening you, it’s based on your own amount of reluctance to confront whether there really is something there. … When you fear fear itself then everything becomes scary because everything is alien, everything represents change, and everything represents a threat.
I like magnolia trees (and in August, I’ll be lucky* enough to live in a top-floor apartment with a bedroom window that opens right into the branches of one).
(* Is there a better, larger word for lucky that would actually mean so-lucky-I-still-have-moments-where-I’m-not-sure-things-are-real-and-actually-happening?)
