Love at First Sight

My parents always told me that you date to marry, you never date to just date. I grew up in a pretty strict household, I wasn’t allowed to have a boyfriend until I was 16 and even then, I wasn’t allowed to be alone with a boy until I turned 18. You see my parents are preachers, and though I hated it at them time, I truly appreciate their overprotectivenss now.

At 16 years old I had never been kissed, and it was heartbreaking (to me) or more so embarrassing. I never had anyone ask me out, I never had anyone truly like me. I was standing at an awkward 5 feet 11 inches, to tall and too skinny for my own body. Not to mention, I had braces.

It was the summer before my junior year of high school. I got a friend request on MySpace (yes I’m that old) turns out it was a guy from high school that I was crushing on big time. We went out on a date (with a chaperone of course) he held my hand, it was magical. I fell in love, he told me he loved me after 4 days of talking on the phone (insert eye roll here) I was beyond smitten with this dude. We get to school and he gives me my first kiss, to say I was disappointed is an understatement. Not magical at all, and nothing like I expected. The relationship didn’t last pass lunch.

It was then that I got desperate, yes desperate. It was junior year and I had no boyfriend! Then summer came and I felt like I was going to die alone. No one ever liked me, no one ever asked me out and the one relationship I did have lasted a week! Right before school started, I decided to put myself out there. There was this guy who I knew had a crush on me, but went to a different school. Ian was younger then me, and not at all what I would normally go for, but he liked me. I went out on a few dates, we made it official and I just remember thinking to myself “okay this is it, this is going to be my life.” I felt stuck, I felt as if this was what love really was, just going along in life with someone you only feel “okay” with.

In the fall of 2008 tragedy struck. My uncle (whom we were all extremely close with) got diagnosed with brain cancer. He wasn’t given long to live and it broke my heart. There were moments we thought that he could actually make it and then those moments would vanish. Instead of my boyfriend being there for me, he would get annoyed with me. In January of 2009 my uncle finally passed. It was a big loss for all of us, Ian however thought otherwise. I remember him telling me “good I’m glad he is finally dead so you can stop crying about it.” That hurt me, more then the death itself, that hurt me because I thought he truly loved me and if this is what love means then love truly sucks.

My family and I ended up driving to Kansas for the funeral. With a ton of different emotions running through my mind, many of them being from the death, I couldn’t focus on my relationship with Ian. Mainly because I didn’t want to have to face the truth, that I was only with him because I thought I’d never find someone else. That was of course until the night before the funeral.

It was January in Kansas -winter- something that this Arizona girl knows nothing about. I went from 60 degrees to 8 degrees with a windchill of -16. Of course it wasn’t planned for, I was wearing a brown hoodie and brown boots that I had brought from home. But we needed to get some extra gear before we went to church that night. We stopped and got some gloves a scarf and a beanie from Walgreens, of course the only color they had was black. I was a mixed match mess! Never in my life had I been so cold and I didn’t care how I looked, and believe me when I was I was a hot (or cold) mess.

We get to the church that my uncle was a youth pastor at and I decided that I really didn’t want to go to his youth group the day before his funeral, it would be too emotional for me. My younger sister went though, and after church I went into the building to find her. As I’m looking through the rooms of the smaller church building that I had been in on many occasions, I spot this gorgeous guy. In that moment I am awestruck and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. He was beyond perfect. Blue eyes, high cheek bones, strong jaw line, tall and broad shouldered. They definitely don’t make boys like that in Arizona. As I’m staring at him with my mouth wide open, he stares back. He gives me a crooked grin, nods his head and says in a sexy deep voice “hey.” At that moment my little sister decides to make an appearance and I turn to her and say “he said ‘hey’” and she goes “say ‘hey’ back stupid!” My heart is pounding, my palms are sweating, my throat is dry and I barely manage to crack out a small “hey.” With a self satisfied grin on his face he turns and walks away. That was it. I was in love. Screw Ian and any other guy I remotely had a crush on in high school, he was it!

I spent the entire night daydreaming about him, thinking about our wedding, the life we would live, and the love that we would have! The next morning I got up and casually tried to ask my aunt about him. She got an idea of who I was talking about and said the worst thing possible to me “oh, he is getting married in 6 months.” My heart dropped, that can’t be right! Not with the way he looked at me! Not at all!

I went to the funeral that night looking for him, trying to find my mysterious man from the night before, and he never showed. The next morning I woke up at 5am to get in the car and drive back to Arizona. Back to my life and back to Ian.

After a week of being home and being mistreated but a guy who claimed to love me, I realized that I could not stop thinking about this guy! Who was he? He couldn’t have been getting married! My aunt had to be wrong.

So I did what any normal 18 year old would do. I cyber stalked him. It took me two weeks and major investigatory skills to find him but I did. It turned out my aunt was wrong. She was thinking I was talking about his older brother, who was in fact getting married. Isaiah on the other hand was not. He was your typical high school bad boy who was a player on the outside but extremely sensitive and sweet on the inside. Somebody that would make every girl swoon. The challenge was excepted. I finally worked up the guts to friend request him and he approved right away. I even got my first message from him, with the subject line saying:

“Hey beautiful”

To be continued...