The Story of Us (cont.)

I'm not sure how I broke the news to my girlfriends that he was coming and we were going on a date but I'm sure it was in a very high pitched, breathless tone of voice.

It was still a blur of reality and Internet friendship. Who knows how he would really look or act. Anyone could send old pictures of themselves with hair and only one chin. I was nervous and slightly scared that he was a serial killer. Just kidding. I agreed to meet him because his mom worked at my doctor's office and actually knew my mom in a round about way, although my mom knew nothing about this guy five hours away. So we agreed to meet at a friend's apartment because I didn't want to tell my dad that I was going on a date with a stranger from the Internet. I really didn't want to tell anyone. This was before Internet dating became popular and I didn't want to be the butt of anymore jokes than I already am.

I spent a lot of time getting ready on that Friday night. He didn't look like the guy that I typically dated and was attracted too but he was amazing and I wanted to look special. I put on my favorite shirt, curled my hair, and actually put on jewelry and perfume. Then my friend left me alone in her apartment and hid upstairs with another friend so that we wouldn't weird him out with a large bunch of women waiting. Then I freaked out about him possibly being a serial killer and I was by myself. My friends and I had worked out a whole system of text message codes just in case.

Next thing I knew, there was a knock on the door and I still remember the exact thing I saw when I opened it. He was standing there in a tight gray shirt, old jeans, Doc Martens, and a gold cross around his neck. His hair was spikey with gel and he was holding a present for me. I remember it so clearly that it still amazes me to this day.

He came in to the apartment and gave me the gift. It was a little dreamsicle angel wrapped in pink wrapping paper, which I still have both today.  To say we were both nervous was an understatement, I could have wrung out my shirt to meet both of our daily water requirements.

We didn't stay there at the apartment long, I think the jitters got to both of us and we quickly left for dinner at Applebees. Later we went and sat by a fountain at the college I was attending called The Duck Pond and just talked. He leaned over to kiss me and I turned away. That was the first time I didn't let him kiss me... turns out I was pretty good at that. The rest of the date I don't really remember. It's been a long time, close to ten years now since our first date. But the one thing that I do remember is that I met my best friend that night and we've been that way ever since. No matter if we were dating, apart and seeing other people, or fighting like cats and dogs, he has always been my best friend since we met that night.

We dated for five months. He came to Tyler a lot and I traveled to Houston once. I was young and didn't like driving that far by myself. I wasn't very independent at the time and had a lot of growing up left to do.


I met his parents the same weekend that we went our our first date. They were so nice and served me game for dinner. I still hear about all the different shades of green that I turned on that first dinner with them when I heard it was game. My dad quit golfing his first time out because he killed a duck with a flying golf ball, do you really think he would hunt?

Those five months I have never laughed harder or been treated better. My whole life had been so tight on money that I had never gotten snacks at the movies or starbucks just because I could. Dating him was the opposite of that. He lavished me with gifts, flowers, special dates, and his time. He devoted so much time to me in between driving to Tyler every weekend and the hours on the phone at the end of each day.

The main thing that sticks out in my head though is the laughter. We had so much fun together. I finally found someone who I could be myself with, someone who didn't understand that crazy brain inside my head but was willing to figure it out eventually. I had been trapped inside myself as an introvert for so long and finally someone came along that was ok with that and the total opposite of that at the same time. Damion is loud and yet he wonders where our middle child gets it from?

At that time in my life, I was very shy and things like meeting his parents and his friends in Houston was painful for me. Not only that but then has asked me to drive to Lafayette to meet the rest of his family for christmas, which I did. I wanted to crawl into swamp and die a few times. His family is wonderful and awesome but I was just too young and too shy to stand it. I had never been happier to cross back into Texas and into my own comfortable little world. That should have signaled the beginning of the end for me but I don't think that I understood it at that time. Things for us were starting to unravel slowly.

The trips back and forth were starting to weigh on him a lot and I wasn't willing to go to Houston more. Plus my dad wasn't comfortable with me making the trip by myself. So on my second trip to Houston, we decided that it would be my last and then end to us. I wasn't ready to get married and neither was he. The distance was just too great to continue if it wasn't going anywhere. So we parted as friends, the sad and sobbing kind of friends.

I cried so hard when I left his apartment building that morning that I got lost in Houston. I missed my turn onto I10 and instead went all the way up highway 6 into an area named copperfield. I remember thinking to myself that if I ever did move to Houston, that would be a great area to live in. I cried the entire trip home and sobbed again when I told my dad, then again the next day when I told my coworkers, and every day after that for awhile.