In 1926, Ernest Hemingway said “If two people love each other, there can be no happy ending to it.” I tended to agree with this for a majority of my life. I’ve always looked at love as a very foreign concept. It seemed like something that could only cause harm. How selfish you must be, to allow somebody to put every ounce of themselves inside of you. To allow somebody to break open their sorry soul and offer it up like scraps. I never wanted to be in love. I never wanted somebody to have that power over me. I thought love was supposed to be a time consuming endeavor. I thought love was supposed to be expected. It was supposed to be waiting. Love was supposed to grow and manifest like tiny little weeds crawling up a building. Developing between bricks and blossoming into a greater garden. I was very wrong.

Have Your Voice Heard: Become an Odyssey Creator

People always ask us how we met. I say “we went to high school together,” because that’s the truth, as thin as it may be. We did go to high school together, but it wasn’t in the sense where we were friends. Actually, we weren’t even acquaintances. To put it bluntly, I didn’t like her at all. She was two years younger than I was, and I knew her name because I knew what people said about her once in a while when she passed by. I chimed in, always. Sarah was an easy target for me, for all of us, and when I heard her name I laughed. It was easy. She did things, and said things, which made her stand out. People knew who she was because they knew what she did. She wasn’t a person, rather than a source of entertainment once in a while. Other than that, she didn’t even exist. We had our own lives. Other than the occasional joke, she never crossed my mind. She was just another thing. My junior year passed, and she ceased to exist. Senior year ended, and my life continued.

Two years after my junior year, I was sitting in my college dorm room bed, when a familiar face appeared online. She was different than I remembered her being. Her hair was longer, she wore glasses now, and she just overall looked much older. She asked me how I had been, and two days later I found myself standing in front of the door to her house.

I think I changed my mind about love because of how easy I had let it consume me. I’m a very stubborn person. I don’t allow myself to open myself up. If you open up to someone, they can latch onto your bones and tie up your vocal cords and leave you bare and cold and empty. I don’t believe in first sight, but when she opened the door to her house I remember what shirt she was wearing. I remember how her hair was parted, and I remember how it all fell to one side, dancing halfway between her back and her right shoulder. She had me wrapped around her finger before the second time I had seen her smile.

I stayed at her house until 3am, and the next morning she would catch a flight to Italy and I imagined I would barely be able to speak to her for ten days.

We texted constantly. We facetime every night. She was the only thing I could think about. It was absolutely insane, to say the least. We had once seen each other once, and we were completely engulfed in the idea of one another. I spent those ten days in a sort of love-at-first-sight trance.

She got back from Italy on February 21 at 11pm. I got dressed, and drove to her house, to see her in person for only the second time. The second time I seen her, she laid out a backpack and began handing me things she had brought back for me. A scarf, a red bracelet, chocolates. I couldn’t stop looking at her. Everything she did amazed me. The way she unpacked, the way she laughed, it was all beautiful. She asked me to be her girlfriend, that day, shortly after midnight, and we still can’t figure out if our anniversary should be celebrated on the 21^st or the 22^nd. I don’t think it matters much.

Meeting Sarah saved my life. I mean that in the most honest way. Meeting Sarah changed who I was. She has made me patient. She has made me confident. She has exposed me to new things and ideas and adventures. The girl I made fun of in high school, ended up being the greatest person I’ve ever met.

I fell in love with the most unexpected person at an even more unexpected time. I fell in love with her in a way that I didn’t know was possible. I’ll be 20 in January, and she’ll be 18 next month. I know that we are young, and I know that we are crazy, but even more so, I know that her and I are meant to be together.

This is the truest thing I have ever known.

Dr.Seuss once said: “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” I now understand what he meant. Sometimes I wonder how I am going to keep her for as long as I possibly can. And it’s terrifying to think that tomorrow the entire world could turn to shambles and we could once again return to existing as nothing more than a memory of this strange galaxy. If she was next to me, I’m not sure I would mind as much.The world we live in is very tiny. Our lives are very short and insignificant and I’m okay with that, because I have her. Everything we do in our lives, we can do because we know we are loved. We make each other stronger. We support each other in ever endeavor, no matter how tiny. I am grateful for the tiny world the two of us have built together so far, and I intend on making sure she knows that. Love is anything but expected, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.