we left his aunt's house at half past nine in the morning after we shared hugs, took photos and said our goodbyes.
the next five hours were spent in his car, driving northbound through california. we ate snacks, took photos and took part in what seems to be my new favourite driving activity...
because of our schedules, i find it difficult to pinpoint an appropriate time to have any kind of discussion with Muffin. he gets home from work and he tends to be too tired to talk. before work, he's too busy to talk. snuggled in bed, he's barely awake enough to talk, so my only option seems to be to talk when we're in the car, on trips expected to last more than twenty minutes. it's not ideal, but it's all i've got to work with, so when i saw that we had fourteen hours of driving in front of us, i seized the opportunity to let Muffin know what i've been pouring over in my head.
recently my head has been tormented with more of my ever-so-fabulous irrational thoughts... i've been losing sleep thinking about his past relationships and how it makes me feel to know that i missed out on so much.
i've been obsessing over every tiny detail...
each photo i saw of Muffin with someone else taunted me because i knew it should have been me in those photos.
every time i snuggled in on the sofa in Muffin's warm embrace i was reminded that the sofa i was on was Origami's and that she got all those embraces that i should have gotten instead.
all the memories that Muffin has of date nights and cuddles and kisses should have starred me, not Origami or his ex-wife or ANYONE else.
i've been battling these and other like thoughts nearly every moment of every day for the last three weeks. wondering when it was going to be my turn to be his one and only officially. every single day i felt more and more irrational and less and less like i was making him happy. my thoughts made me feel inadequate, hurt and like i was never, ever going to be able to measure up to Origami or anyone else from his past.
it was in the first four hours that i did what could only loosely be defined as "passive whining." i started boldly and progressively debilitated into brief murmurs punctuated by tears. see, i have a habit of feeling awful for having feelings... i tend to think so little of myself that when i express my thoughts and then don't get the response i hoped for, i fall into a cute little slump that ruins my day.
after about an hour of the silent treatment he bought me an ice cream and then asked me if i wanted to stop at Mount Shasta to take photos.
we pulled off to a viewing and rest stop where he raced around the area in a bit of a tizzy, which i blamed on the tense atmosphere that filled the car for the previous hours. we stopped and took photos but he refused to cuddle me or offer any kind of reassurance to calm my restless nerves. he led me around the site, looking at all the different viewpoints, unable to find what he deemed as the perfect place to take a photo, so we rushed back to the car and he drove on, seemingly determined to find the perfect place to take a photo.
he was a man possessed.
the stress levels in the car maintained as he desperately sought for another exit that would offer us what he felt would be the perfect place to take a photo of the mountain and lake.
the next exit we found was for a camping ground in a cute little town about fifteen minutes down the road. we pulled off and he drove in a circle twice before stopping. he stopped and rushed ahead of me. i could barely catch up when he stopped and looked at the lake off the edge of the cliff we were standing on. i paused behind him and watched his face... falling in love with him and the crisp air. i took photos of him so i could remember our moment on the lake.
he grabbed me in the middle of a photo and he looked at me. he told me that we'd known one another ten years and no matter what the years have give us, i've always been his best friend. he hugged me and kissed my forehead. he held me and i remember thinking to myself that it felt like a proposal, but i knew he didn't have the money for a ring and i knew that he'd been reminding me that he wanted to wait to "do this right" with me, so i smugly kissed his neck, soaking in the fact that he was being cuddly and cute and dismissing the possibility that i should memorize the moment perfectly because it might be something stupendously important and beautiful.
he squeezed me harder and said a lot of things that i can't completely remember... i remember him telling me he wanted to be with me forever and pulled back to look at me before getting down on one knee.
it was at this point that i completely lost it. i instantly felt like the star of every single rom-com ever... i had never in my entire life anticipated that i'd have a boy propose to me ever, let alone on one knee, on a mountain, in front of a lake.
he said i squealed and the next thing i remember was him asking me if i would marry him. my very immediate response was "fuck off," which was uttered only before i completely fell apart and wept. he remained steadfast on one knee before asking me if that was a yes. i nodded and he placed the tiny ring on my finger and stood up to kiss me.
and it was with that that i became engaged... something neither of us has really ever been officially.
since that day we have been nonchalantly planning things. the planning was actually prompted by him, the other day, when he grabbed the laptop in the middle of a film and said he had some research to do. the "research" came to be about what to do after getting engaged and what kind of planning should be done. the last two days we've been researching together... looking at photos for ideas and deciding on the tiny and large details that will make our day something spectacular and will make all this waiting completely worth it.
so, today, i am writing as a newly-engaged girl... my blog will most likely turn into a place for me to brainstorm my own person DIY wedding (which him and i have decided would suit us best financially and creatively). we have a lot of plans down already, but there is still such a substantial amount left to decide, primarily, the date.
in any event, BWEE!! i'm engaged and finally get to create the wedding of my dreams with the boy of my dreams!! keep your eyeballs peeled, from what i've read, this is the part that will make or break any relationship!
