HIMMGF – Part 4 – Now It’s a True Lesbian Love Story

Here’s my next installment of the “How I Met My Girlfriend” series. Link to all HIMMFG posts here.

So, you guys might have an idea of how the rest of this story goes. I got the girl and boom—happily ever after. Well, you’re not totally wrong. I did get the girl.

On the blessed day of January 4, 2015, I, Jessica Scared-of-Everything Magnan, wooed the girl of my dreams with a few witty words and a whole lotta charm. (I’m giving you the bedazzled version, here. The bland reality is that I gushed out my feelings in an embarrassing novella-length message that I almost hoped would get eaten by good ol’ (un)reliable tumblr dot com. But how did you win her heart by being an utter buffoon? Hint: Jas is also a dork. Don’t let her kickass demeanor fool you.)

To give you the math here, we started dating then and did not meet officially in person until May 15, 2016, which is over a year. I know what you’re thinking, what the hell? HELL INDEED. Just kidding, obviously. It wasn’t hell. Hard, yes. But the first year of missing each other was the easiest. Telling people about us was harder.

Jas and I could both talk about the anxieties of it all: The judgements, the looks, the misunderstandings. Half of it worry about being gay, half of it worry about the distance. Maybe just one or the other wouldn’t have been so hard. I think it’s more the distance than it was telling people Jas was a girl. I was pretty sure no one was going to be an actual homophobe to my face, but the distance was a different story. Hell, even just last week I had a family friend literally say the words “Can you believe she thinks she’s in love with someone she never met?” right to me, knowing full-well about my entire situation with Jasmin.

Back then, maybe they were right. I mean, what was I doing? What did I expect from this? I would think about it all the time, all the time. But there was just one thing that I knew for sure: I had to meet her. I had to meet her in person. I didn’t care how long it would take, I had to do it. I just knew that if I met her, everything would make sense. So much of my life had already fallen into place because of Jas. I became more organized, less isolated, more at peace with myself. She was helping me become who I am today, who I was meant to be. I felt so open to be the person I was growing into, someone the rest of the world has only gotten pieces of because I’d sheltered myself too much beforehand. This was all because of her.

I could tell that sometimes, when I was home from college on the weekends, I accidentally talked about her too much. Maybe even just before January, too. But my mom and sister at this point have both already spoken to her on Skype too, carried conversations with us and listened to one too many of my not-very-guarded gushes. So much so that when I finally got up the nerve to tell my sister about us, her response was, “You say this as if I don’t already know.”

A few weeks later when I told my long-time friend from high school, she told me she was happy for me, said “if she’s important to you, she’s important to me,” and then asked for her full name and hometown so she could give Jas a good and thorough Facebook stalk. I sobbed after both conversations. Although, not every conversation has gone as great. (Or to be specific, not everyone was told in such honorable ways. For example, at least they didn’t get the coming-out-and-dating-a-girl-who-lives-in-England email while I had already been in England visiting my girlfriend for a month, like my parents did. But in the end, that actually went down fine too. I was told that my dad cried happy, proud tears.)

So Jas and I spent the first long months of our relationship missing and loving each other whole-heartedly, knowing that we couldn’t let this what-if go, and that there was a very clear next step for us: Flying me out to meet her.

Part 5

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