We're Engaged!

A little over two weeks ago, Joe got down on one knee and proposed!

I shared the whole story in a video here of how it all went down, and in my video, it was really just a fact-based recollection of what happened.

But I've had this blog for half my life, and something I really wanted to do was sit down and capture not just what happened, but how it felt, and what it all means to me.

Let's start at the very beginning!

I've mentioned this on Instagram a few times since we got engaged, but growing up, I was obsessed with weddings and marriage. I thought I would become a wedding planner. I had a scrapbook and binder full of ideas about weddings. I would ask my mom to buy me wedding magazines at the grocery store. I was absolutely, completely, obsessed with weddings.

When my parents got divorced in high school, I remember for a few years thinking I didn't know if I wanted to get married anymore. Or if I wanted to have kids. There are a lot of feelings that are far too personal that I won't share here, but at the core, I really felt for a very long time like the happiness and love I had once kind of just assumed I would find, and would get to have, was out of the realm of possibility. Coupled with a lot of other things and other factors in my life, there were years in high school and college where I truly was so sad, so unhappy, and so unsure that I would ever really have the life I wanted.

And I'm not going to say I just met Joe and suddenly everything was perfect, because that's not what happened. What did happen, however, was slowly, little things fell into place. I transferred colleges. I changed my major. I made new best friends. I felt better about myself. And then... I did meet Joe.

There's a long story of how we met, and then there's the story of how we met. The short story, as I described, is that we met at a bar thanks to mutual friends. The long story is that the night before we met, I remember feeling something like a switch had flipped in me. I've told my friends this for years. It sounds so weird, but it was like the most distinct feeling. I've never felt anything like it since, and I still think about it all the time; I remember feeling like something tangible inside me had switched, and I had sort of made this decision to just be happy and try to just feel good about myself and my life, and just be more optimistic. It had little to do with boys and more to do with how I felt about myself.

The next day, I met Joe.

It was not a situation of "when you know, you know" at all. In fact, I don't believe in that. We started hanging out and chatting because it was around the same time as Covid and there was truly, honestly, nothing else to do. It was convenient! And why not?!

But as the years went on, it was no longer convenient - it was actually very inconvenient. We did long distance for almost four years. And I remember people talking about long distance and being like "oh wow, that must be so hard," or, "I did that and we broke up, it was so hard," and I never once felt like it was hard. It wasn't really hard at all; I had just moved to New York, I was making new friends, I had my own life, I had things going on. I remember thinking, what should be so hard about this? We still talked all the time, we saw each other once a month, it was kind of fun! I had great airline status, lol. Of course, it was sad when we had to part, but it was also exciting to plan something to look forward to. And it was nice knowing that a relationship born out of convenience and ease had become a bit more complicated and yet had only grown more wonderful.

And then Joe decided to move to New York! We moved in together two and a half years ago. We've had so much fun. There were challenges at the beginning adjusting to living in the same city; like, how much are we supposed to hang out? What should I invite him to, or not invite him to? But for the most part, things just continued to get better. We've created life together here, and it's so lovely.

And here is why I don't believe in "when you know, you know" - because truly one thing I believe about our relationship is that it's only gotten better over time. When I met him was when I liked him the least. The more time we spend together, the better it gets.

And over all this time, the dreams have come back. The dreams of a wedding. The dreams of having kids. I want so many kids. I want so many dogs. I want a house with a big backyard, and I want Joe to cook for us every night, and I want to play music in my house and host Halloween parties and barbecues. All of the dreams I had for my life have become so clear and so specific. I really think that is what love is to me; it's being able to hope for something you want so deeply, and have someone to share it with who hopes for those same things. It's choosing someone who wants to create your dream life together with you, and wants nothing above that. I really believe we have found that in each other.

When Joe proposed two weeks ago, I knew it was coming. But of course, I was still surprised. There is nothing that feels like that feeling. I had been hoping and waiting for so long, and nothing could have ever prepared me for how it felt in the moment. I said "of course," and then I said thank you.

xoxo