When you find the girl of your dreams, you don’t wait: you act. Acting and doing was always a staple to my relationship with her: my Cammie Girl
Meeting on Bumble, a popular dating website, is never an orthodox way of meeting. But when lost in the pursuit of a soul mate, you do what needs to be done… Okay, okay, I’ll cut the crap. The intention was never to find something that would stick. It was always just to have fun. Date around. I had never really casually dated before. It was fun for a second. Until you realize that none of these girls are worth your time.
That all changed when the most beautiful woman swiped right on me. I was convinced that it was a trick. Lionesses don’t mate with sheep. Stallions don’t breed with goats. And solid 6.5’s don’t attract 10’s. This might be a crude way of putting this, but it was honestly how I felt at the time. “God first.” That was in her bio, under her smiling mouth and aviator glasses on a foreign beach front. I immediately swiped right (the act of validating you want to meet this person) on the app. She didn’t respond. She didn’t respond for almost 24 hours. The hours of that day at work ticked by as I continually checked the progress of if she had messaged me. She didn’t.
In a final “Hail Mary”, I clicked the button to extend the time allotted for her to message me. In the fear of being desperate, I decided that you were worth acting. It was the first time I acted instead of waited for her.
She finally messaged me. We went out. The date was a dream, of course, (why else would I be writing this if it didn’t work out…? Duh…?). I even got a kiss on the first date. She wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic as me the first-time meeting (and kissing). But hey. I didn’t need her to be on the same page as me. From the moment I met her, to the very second my keyboard types these words, I knew that I had met the woman to end all women. This was the ultimate game changer. This bombshell of a woman. A woman who didn’t mind laughing at my jokes, even when they’re not funny. The woman who would jump in the middle of a bar and try to touch a wooden beam, just for the hell of it, just because it was fun. A woman who talked of love and God and dreams and goals and life and living and art and change and depth. Oh God, the depth this woman possessed. I was smitten immediately. Head over heels, more like it.
She allowed me to go out with her again. A second breakfast date turned into a third dinner and smoothie date. Which turned into staying up in her apartment kissing and talking and being completely irresponsible by staying up way too late on a work night. Which is what I wanted. Growing up is no fun. This girl gets that.
Our mutual love of the band “Queen”, our relentless laughter, our talks, our growth, our desire, our dreams, our plans for the future, our dancing, our focus, and our outrageous nights out. These were the founding points to something I never thought I would have. Something that I deemed a myth. Something that could cause such a fear and excitement and joy and pain and fear. Yes fear: this was a love so pure and unselfish and thoughtful that it would cause me to abandon everything that I held dear and cling to the possibility of just being in her presence. Just being in her midst was soothing. Holding her close was a comfort. Talking to her stroked my confidence. And dancing with her. The dancing was the swords killing blow to any fear that might be left over. The dancing was the most powerful weapon our love possessed. It still is to this day.
I’ve been speaking in the past tense. As if this is something that has ended. Well reader, spoiler alert: it hasn’t ended. In fact, this is only the beginning. I intend to write many more stories about this wonderful, wonderful woman. But don’t leave just yet: I’ll leave you with one final memory.
The day that you in turn decided to act. You had just found out that I wanted to leave my job and find a better opportunity, whether it was in a different city, or whether it was in the same. You were hurt, understandably so. We had only been dating for less than a month. This was all so new. I remember telling you and the pain cut deep. I could tell. I was so scared. Terrified that you wouldn’t see our potential. A potential forever. Instead, you subverted my expectations and you chose me. And I could tell that that choosing, was a forever choosing. It wasn’t just a “okay we’ll see where this goes” choosing. It wasn’t a “okay fine” choosing. It was the most conscious and brave choosing I have ever seen. You chose to endure pain, because I was worth it to you. Worth. I was worth something. A feeling that I cannot remember in recent memory.
The lioness chose the sheep. But I wasn’t just a sheep. To you, I was the lion. And that’s really what it means when they say, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Whenever a sheep comes along and finds a lioness, that sheep is immediately transformed into a lion, because the lioness has chosen to see the sheep as a lion. Or maybe the sheep was never actually a sheep? Maybe he was always a lion. And then when you really start to think about it, is it possible the lioness was never a lioness. And maybe she was just your lioness. But who gives a shit. What matters in the end is that the lion found his lioness. And this is just a ridiculous metaphor that goes to show that when somebody loves someone enough, the past doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you used to be a sheep. I guess this is all just an even bigger metaphor for how God sees us. Lions and lambs. Sheep and lionesses. People. Creations. Relationships.
At the end of the day, I knew it was you. It will always be you.
2020 