So, Jeff's been in Seattle for work the past week. My best friend lives in Seattle, so I was originally going to try to make it out with him, but it was really short notice between the time they told him he was going and the time he left. So I've been home alone since last Wednesday with the Groobs. It was kind of nice to have the house to myself at first (I've been on a SATC binge...whenever I'm by myself there are always a million movies and shows I want to watch that Jeff isn't interested in, but I always end up watching something I've seen 10 times over again. Go figure.) but I'm excited for him to come home tomorrow. This is actually the longest we've been apart since 2009, when I first moved to Delaware.
Speaking of which...did you know Jeff was a sailor when I met him? He wasn't in the military; he was what's called a Merchant Marine, which basically meant that he worked on huge ships that were mostly transporting various things (I think he said one was transporting cars to Europe...the last ship he was ever on was transporting military equipment to Iraq, which terrified me...not only because he'd be in war zones, but because his ship was going through Somalia during that whole pirate fiasco). That's actually how I met him...he'd get lonely on his ships, so he'd talk to random people online just for something to do. By the time I met him he was ready to quit and go back to school, because he didn't want to be constantly coming and going anymore. A lot of his trips were for months at a time...some of them stayed relatively local, going up and down the Delaware River, but a lot of them were international. This means that he got to see the world, which is awesome, but he got tired of it pretty quickly.
By the time we started dating, Jeff was done sailing, and didn't plan to go back. He had gone back to school for teaching, and was doing really well. We spent the first six or so months of our relationship long-distance - he was in Delaware and I was 5 hours away in PA. Every weekend, he'd drive up to PA to visit and drive back home on Sunday night. About six months into our relationship, I moved to Delaware, and we temporarily moved in with his mom and stepdad while we looked for an apartment. Since he was in school and I had just moved here, money was pretty tight. After much discussion, Jeff decided to do one more sailing trip over the summer, because his license was still valid and it pays really well, so we'd be able to move into our own place when he got back and he'd be able to make it back in time for school to start again. I reluctantly agreed, but this meant that I was going to be living with his family by myself for the summer. Luckily, his family is one of the warmest, most welcoming families I've met, so they made it easy on me. His mom and I started a little routine where I'd work my bartending shift and then go to the gym late at night, and then I'd come home around 2 AM and we'd watch Big Brother After Dark together. It was weird, but nice. Jeff and I had limited contact during that time, because something about the areas he was in made it hard to talk on the phone, but we'd email each other daily and at the end of each email we'd write corny song lyrics to each other. It was cute and lame, and we were super excited to be reunited when he came back. And we've been (consistently) together ever since.
It's funny to look back on the first few years of our relationship and think about how far we've come and how different our lives are today. I can't imagine what my life would be like now if I hadn't met Jeff...I definitely wouldn't still be living in DuBois, Pennsylvania (which is where my mom lives, and where I was temporarily living when I met Jeff...though, not with my mom) but I'm honestly not sure what I'd be doing or where I'd be. I think about how lucky I am to have ended up where I am all the time. I don't know if I believe in fate, or that things turn out the way they were meant to be, but I can't really imagine being any happier anywhere else or with anyone else. How's that for a Valentine's Day story for ya? :)
No comments:
Post a Comment