HIMMGF – Part 3 – Journals, Reality Check #2, and The Leap.

Part 3 of the How I Met My Girlfriend Series! Links to all HIMMGF posts here.

After my friend had pushed me out of denial and right into verifying what my subconscious had known, I was kind of a sappy wreck. I spent a lot of time contemplating if I should ever tell Jas what I’d realized. You know how when we say goodnight or goodbye, we sometimes sign off with a little, “I love you”? Yeah, um, that, but like with feelings.

The girl lived on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Forget about the confusion with falling in love with someone I’ve never physically met, or all the imagined judgments of friends and family, or the fact that I haven’t even told any of them I was bi. She literally lived 4,000+ miles away. Even if Jasmin liked me back, what would I be getting myself into?

An infinite number of questions fluttered in and out as frequent as the butterflies in my stomach swooped around every time we talked. Yet, when we got into conversations, I stepped away from all that worried me. Getting a job, keeping up with homework, studying for tests, making friends, coming out. I entered a little world where none of that mattered. A place with confidence and encouragement and assurance and understanding. With Jas, I never had to explain myself.

Except for this. This, I have to explain. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t even know what I expected to come from this. Like, Hey, I know you live on a different continent and all but, wanna date? (I mean essentially, that is what happened, just a little bit more elaborately.)

So how did I handle all this inner conflict? By doing absolutely nothing. Weeks passed by with these all internal wars, yet the only signs of them were in writing. (Some things haven’t changed!) At the time, I was taking a creative nonfiction class. We had weekly journal assignments that only our professor read, and wowee did she get a mess of my feelings. Some actual snippets from said journals include:

—

“You bond over the embarrassing amount of tv the two of you consume, peeling back the characters’ skin, mulling over different scenarios of “what if?”, and using each other as a crutch when experiencing the aching loss of Rose Tyler because it’s something neither of you will get over.”

—

“And time is a precious thing to waste.

            Unless I’m wasting it on you. I can hear every word you say to me. Sometimes they get caught on the threads of my brain, replaying over again like a skipping record. When you’re happy I feel that too—feel that too—feel that too. Sometimes they make me skip along, and my feet don’t drag as much because I don’t feel trapped in scripted dialogues, and words aren’t something I need to save up and distribute sparingly when you’re the one receiving them—I want to give them away.”

—

“’If you are lost, remember this star.’ I stare until the star burns white when I close my eyes, but the lost is still in me. So I reopen them. A flicker of light flashes through the little dipper and I hear a gasp behind me. “Was that a shooting star?”

            I smile thinking about you. I had been waiting for this chance for a long time now, and when the waiting and dreaming finally pay off we can share all the wishes we make.”

—

So we’ll call that cringe-fest my reality check number two. At the semester’s end, when I gathered up all my journals to turn in, I realized just how many pieces talked about Jas. It wasn’t just talking to her or exchanging texts between classes, my subconscious always slipped back to her. I constantly caught myself imagining what it would be like to see her in person, (which is something I continued thinking about every single day until it finally happened, but we’ll get to that later).

After too much contemplation, I finally told Jas how I felt.

Part 4

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