Let me tell you about how I met The Boy. It’s a true soap opera like story; a bunch of coincidences, naive optimism, and teenage lust lead us to where we are now, almost 8 years later.
It started like many stories of this nature do. Girl meets boy, they fall in love, he consistently acts like a douche and then goes overseas on holiday with his family. She retaliates by hooking up with someone else.
I was 16, and decided to head to Bowentown on New Years eve with a few people from the supermarket I worked at. One of the guys uncles was travelling with the gypsy fair and we planned to camp at their site.
As it happened The Boy was also travelling with the gypsy fair for the summer. His unusual name was a talking point, as always, and a few of the young ‘gypsies’ started to pal around with our group.
I don’t really remember the full events of the night, but I remember very vividly going to the portaloo and just as I finished the countdown to midnight started. I very graciously leapt out of the toilet and kissed him as the new year started.
That started a year of texting, and when his phone was lost, writing, and then eventually emails. We have a bag each of the letters we wrote each other. I lived in Ngaruawahia, he lived in Hastings about 6 hours away, and as school students who weren’t in a relationship – due to distance, and the fact we didn’t really know each other – we didn’t talk on the phone or visit. The only other time we saw each other was in April when he came for short visit.
During the year I was in and out of relationships with both douche and another boy from school.
I left school half way through the year and went to tech and near the end of the year douche decided to call it off via phone and I never saw him again. Instead of getting too upset I jumped online to talk to The Boy. He was moving to Wellington for uni in the new year and on a whim we decided to go together.
We had seen each other in person on a total of 4 separate days so I booked a bus ticket to Hastings to spend a week with The Boy to make sure we actually liked each other in real life. I met both of his parents and had a great time. A couple of days into the trip we had “the talk” and made it official. That was on December the 2nd 2002 – 7 years ago today.
I went home and prepared to move out. After xmas The Boy came to spend New Years with me and get my stuff. We filled up his car and moved everything to Hastings. And here’s where the story continues to be a soap opera…I got sick.
Well I’d actually been sick for a while. But I didn’t really realise it. In Hastings the symptoms go too bad to ignore and I was admitted to hospital, thankfully The Boy’s mum was willing to look after me.
We needed to find a flat in Wellington so The Boy caught a ride down with his dad and stayed with his sister spending a few days trudging the streets looking for a place while I was laid up in bed recovering. Once I was released I bused to Wellington with nothing but a bag of clothes and a blow up mattress until the rest of our sparse possessions arrived and we could buy some furniture.
And here we are 7 years later. Love you hun.
