I am finally breaking the ice and talking about how Tim and me came to be “we.”
The 14th of every month is special because Tim and I met by chance / luck / fate in Las Vegas (Koi Lounge in Planet Hollywood to be specific haha) on January 14, 2011. I was there with my cousin and her friend to celebrate my cousin’s 21st birthday. Tim was there with his brother – he was on leave following a 7-month deployment out to sea. His and his brother’s flight was set to leave Vegas the night we met … but we met and he thought I was someone he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to get to know so … he rescheduled his flight.
Now, I don’t believe in love at first sight (if I did, however, this would be the time for it!), but I do believe that when you know, you just know. I can’t explain how I knew or how it felt as I’m sure noone can whose felt that way but it is exactly what happened in the moment we met.
NYC, March 2011
So that night we met, Tim rescheduled his flight (unbeknownst to me), we hung out and spoke for a while, and then each went back to our respective hotels. The next morning, I woke up to a voicemail and text from him (apparently, we’d made plans to all hang out after we changed out of our club clothes but the girls and I passed out haha) and in acting completely out of character, I texted him back. The rest is history…
VA, July 2011
Tim wound up postponing his flight 2 more times to hang out for a few more days. (In retrospect, I am very grateful for his spontaneous decisions and those days together because I now know how precious just a few days with one another are.) When we each got back from Vegas, things were a bit hectic. I was involved with someone else but knew that had reached its end so I broke off the relationship. Tim also went underway for 3 weeks, during which we communicated via email and 2 phone calls. When he returned, he visited me in NYC, my hometown and where I am currently living and going to law school. That weekend was amazing; it was like we’d known each other our whole lives so we were excited to set our next visits up. At the time, he was stationed in Norfolk, VA so we went between VA and NY every 2-4 weeks until October 2011 …
DC, August 2011
Hawaii, May 2012
Detroit (Lions football game), December 2012
Tim’s ETS is in the summer of 2014 π We hope to live together (temporarily) in late summer to early fall of 2013 and then to live permanently together when his military career is done. It’s nerve-wracking making big decisions and thinking about his life without the military but I think he is ready for the next chapter, as am I. Don’t get me wrong, I love and support the military 100%. But it has been difficult maintaining a long distance relationship and juggling the constant changes that come along with his active military career while I’m in law school.