In Which My Story was Fundamentally Altered

That night on the twisty slide was the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. The turmoil was engulfing, but it presented itself less often in the form of confusion or anxiety and more in the form of loss. I could see my old dreams sloughing off. I imagined my fingers stretching open and letting go. I conjured the same image over and over, an effort to coax my heart to act in the same manner. I had to let go and ease into an unknown future, one I had not planned out or spent years hoping for, one I could not see in my mind's eye. It was so painful.

The first weekend in April, we took the train to the city for General Conference. We held hands as if we always had- as we walked the sidewalks, sat through meetings, and rode through the dark back to home. We stood alone in my kitchen before he left for the night and when he said goodbye, he kissed my forehead and pulled me in close. I relaxed into him. He was so comfortable and being there was so purely joyful, but when he left, I went to my room and sat on the floor next to my bed as wave after wave of loss washed over me in heaving sobs.

My concept of time after that night is skewed. All I know is this: it was the first week of April, our relationship was still fairly tenuous, I was still hiding my long-distance boyfriend from Patrick as well as Patrick from my long-distance boyfriend, he was still introducing me as his "friend", and I still thought on some days that maybe, just maybe this pseudo-relationship we had would dissolve and I would get back to my original plans for life. By the last week of April, three weeks later, we were talking about marriage. What happened between the first and last week of the month is, quite frankly, a miracle.

I finally worked up the courage to be completely honest and when I was, he so humbly and graciously offered me time and space to sort things out that I knew in that moment that I already had everything figured out. I wanted to be with him. I would give up everything necessary to stay. And so we continued to spend every spare moment together and in one of those moments sometime in mid-April, we were talking about aging and I joked that someday I would have to help him up the stairs to bed and the joke turned suddenly serious.
"You want to marry me, huh?"
"Yes."
And that was pretty much that.