Our Story
There’d be no distance that could hold us back…
(Her words)
If there were only one word to describe the story of us, it would be this: fate. One chilly evening in early February 2003, I accompanied friends to a presentation of The Vagina Monologues in Huntington, WV. After the play, we went to a local bar to see a band. This was to be a last hurrah of sorts, as I had already accepted a position with the Veterinary Emergency Center in Richmond, VA and was to be packing up and moving in just a few weeks. At this bar, my friend ran into an acquaintance from Marshall University. His name was Benjamin. He was adorable and awkward and seemed much too intelligent to be interested in me. Introductions were made and we chatted quite easily for a while until my friends suddenly decided to run off to a party. I was mildly annoyed and encouraged my new friend to come to the party as well. Thankfully, he did. You don’t need to know the details of the rest of the evening, but I will give you a hint: there was smooching involved.
However, the day after the party, I decided there was no sense in pursuing this romantic entanglement any further since I would soon be living hundreds of miles away. So Benjamin and I became pen pals of sorts. There were handwritten letters and adorable packages and with each one I thought, ‘Wow, what a great guy.’ In this interim, Benjamin graduated from Marshall and soon after accepted a position in Charleston, SC. Now our distance was even greater. But we were still pen pals, so no matter.
Somewhere along the way, though, something changed. Both of us point to our individual viewings of the movie Garden State. I had just ended a relationship and was ready to give up dating altogether, convinced it was not for me. I wrote of this in a letter to Benjamin. Our letters began to center more on romance and relationships and our phone calls became more frequent.
In the fall of 2004, still under the pretext of “we’re-just-friends,” I invited Benjamin to visit me in Richmond for Halloween, our favorite holiday. He accepted and I was suddenly forced to face my feelings. I confided to a friend at work, “I think I have a crush on my pen pal!”
Benjamin arrived on my doorstep as I was peeling zombie makeup from my face. It had been over a year since we had actually laid eyes on one another, and I imagine I was quite a sight. We had dinner and awkward conversation that evening, leaving a great deal of things unspoken. Finally, that evening, during a viewing of the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, two hands crept slowly towards each other until they were clasped together. And everything changed.
Unfortunately, there was still that pesky matter of distance to be dealt with, which we did for many months. Letters and e-mails and long phone calls and hundreds of miles clocked on our respective odometers made it bearable to a point. But the distance began to pain us.
Finally, in the spring of 2005, Benjamin was offered a position at the Medical College of Virginia here in Richmond. We packed all of his belongings into a truck and drove that distance for one last time.
We’ve been together ever since, in our little sea foam green house with our furry children and couldn’t be happier.
(His words)
I like to think of myself as a man of science and reason and unswayed by such fanciful notions as fate or kismet. Sometimes, though, events are put into motion with such sheer momentum and inevitability that the results are so powerfully unstoppable as to escape logic. My relationship with Staci is such a thing. I don’t believe in fate, but I don’t have any other words to describe how we came to be here.
As Staci mentioned we met in a bar in Huntington. I don’t remember why I went that night; somebody probably invited me. I noticed her amid the crowd despite the clamor and the chaos of a local band and devoted wannabees. We spoke, and our conversation was effortless and casual. There was never any question of whether I would follow her to a party.
Then we went our separate ways. By all accounts it probably should have logically — there’s that word again — ended there. But it didn’t. I saw something in Staci that I couldn’t forget. I wrote, and I called, and I emailed. Contrary to my usual nature I pledged to stay relatively cool in the hopes of not coming across as obsessed and stalker-ish.
We connected over the smoking ruins of our previous relationships. The very same day she invited me to her house for Halloween I was being consoled by a coworker over the relationship I had just destroyed. I remember that I said “If there’s anyone I’m fated to be with, it’s Staci.” A few hours later I got an email.
I don’t know what you call that.