Somedoby to Love, Part 2

Read Part 1 Here

The one beauty of a long distance relationship is that it stands or falls on communication. If it survives, then you are able to communicate very well. If it doesn’t, well, you apparently can’t. Still, day after day it begins to wear on you, having someone so dear so very far away. Sometimes, I doubted the validity of it all. Other times, it has been more real to me than my next breath. I began to make good on my intention to love her. I did the sweet boyfriend things: texted her every night after she goes to bed, so she had a message waiting for her when she woke up; went to visit her at least once a month; and, naturally, gave her flowers every time I visited, often accompanied by dark chocolate (her favorite).

I began to notice, the more affectionate I grew toward Elizabeth, the more affection I had, the more affection I wanted to give, and the more affection I wanted to see all people give each other. I also began to see manners of displaying that affection more and more. Even in Rubik’s cubes. So I sent her a picture one morning, claiming the artistic validity of a heart comprised of a Rubik’s cube:

“We're walkin' into the fields.
We're walkin into the forest.
The moon is before us.
Up above
We're holdin' hands in the rain
S-sayin' words like I love you
D-d-d'you love me? Yeah

My my heart like a kick drum
My my heart like a kick drum
My my heart like a kick drum
My my love like a voice.”
—The Avett Brothers “Kick Drum Heart”

I made her a mixtape of songs that reminded me of what we had. And another. The second mix I titled “i carry your heart with me” after an E.E. Cummings poem I quite like. It goes like this:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

This made the difficulty less difficult, knowing that I carried her heart, and she carried mine. The problem was that because we had each other’s heart, our hearts were still not together. But I was okay with “fearing no fate” because “she was my fate.” Some days I literally looked up at the sky and thought that “whatever a sun will always sing” was her.


The real predicament came when I realized that the choice I had made, to love Elizabeth, no matter what, had actually happened. You must understand, in my experience of being me, normally the things I choose to do of my own will fail relatively terribly, as my will is very weak. So when this one thing I had willed actually came to be, the logical solution is that something supplemented my own will. Does this mean that the choice was not mine? No. But was I alone in making it? I think not. And, to be honest, I am glad it was not—I would have probably chosen something a lot dumber.

Still, I now had the dilemma of my love. I loved Elizabeth. Normally this is a prerequisite for marriage. But I wasn’t ready for marriage, was I? I had always heard about guys being scared of commitment, and scoffed at the possibility that I would fall into such a pathetic condition. No, I would be a real man, buck up, and propose when I came to such a juncture. But when I realized that I might actually be in love, it genuinely scared me. When you are in love, true love, real love, there is nothing that anyone can tell you beforehand, there is no experience you have had off of which can base your thoughts. You have no idea what to do.

“People, people, people, they make it sound so easy
They say just do what your heart tells you to
But sometimes you cannot feel it
Sometimes you cannot hear it
Sometimes it won’t talk back to you
And yeah I know you love me
And yeah I want to love you back
And how I know you love me
And how I want to love you bad.”
—The Avett Brothers “Pretty Girl From San Diego”

I was nowhere near ready to make that commitment, and yet, everything in my life was ready for it. My pastor friend encouraged me to press on, telling me that commitment is like a swimming pool, you can’t expect to get a feeling for it by dipping your toes in on the side. The only way you are going to get used to the temperature is by jumping in headlong. So I decided to jump.

On the seventh of July, as we were driving from her parents’ house in Florida, to my family in South Carolina, while I was sharing parts of who I am that no one had been privy to before, I told her I loved her. This is, I have heard, a huge milestone. For Elizabeth and myself, it was inevitable. There was no other way it could have happened. The way we treated each other—loved each other—provided for no other circumstance than this. One day in February I asked a girl to go to Chick-fil-a with me, and five months later I am in love.

“I say hey I'll be gone today
But I'll be back all around the way
It seems like everywhere I go
The more I see
The less I know
But I know one thing:
I love you
I love you
I love you
I love you

I've been a lot of places all around the way
I've seen a lot joy and I've seen a lot of pain
But I don't want to write a love song for the world,
I just want to write a song about a boy and a girl”
—Michael Franti “Say Hey (I Love You)”

Love has occasionally been viewed as requirement for marriage. I subscribe to such a tradition, and was immediately aware of the impending doom of my marriage. I say doom because I could see no positive ending to the matter. Having lived with myself for twenty one and one-half years at this point, I had begun to notice my tendency to be a jackass, and the consistent degradation of many relationships such a tendency causes. Naturally, a relationship as weighty as this would necessarily result in an even more weighty screw up on my part. Past experiences began to rise in my memory: every girl, every failure. It hurts some, because I wanted to share everything with her, but I didn’t want to hurt her with my semi-secret mistakes.

At this point in our story, I fell into a twofold trap: first, I assumed that I would have been able to fully and successfully love Elizabeth for the rest of my life all on my own strength; second, I completely removed her feelings from my calculations. I seemed to have forgotten that, if I was incapable of loving her, if I did not love her, then she would have probably let me know. Love, while it is not a feeling, can always be felt. We felt it.

“I got secrets from you, you got secrets from me
Because you're so worried about what I'm gonna think,
Baby I'm worried too.
But if love is a game, girl, then you're gonna win.
I'll spend the rest of my life bringing victory in,
If you want me to, yeah!”
—The Avett Brothers “Paranoia in B-flat Major”

The real test of love is in real life. Not in the happy, romantic, lovey-dovey moments. Even Hollywood can nail that. Love comes in when life comes in: honest, average life. I realized at some point in our relationship that Elizabeth asks “Why?” when deciding to do something, and I tend to ask “Why not?” This gives rise to serious conflicts when I decide to do something obnoxious just for obnoxiousness’ sake, and she wants to behave like a reasonable adult.

Elizabeth eats slowly, with purpose, while I tend to inhale my meals with the speed of the latest Hoover vacuum. She likes to plan things and be organized; I prefer spontaneity—that is unless something undermines the plan I had in mind—in which case I freak out. I take what are often joking discussions and slam them into heated arguments.

Each of these concerns has the potential to be a serious problem. Or not. The choice is ours. I could resolve every issue we ever have, I could work very hard to make sure that she never has a problem with anything I do, and she could do the same. I could buy her flowers, write her poems, massage her feet each and every day, but that wouldn’t be our love.

Love is a funny thing in that you can’t earn it. I don’t love her because she’s done the right things to make me do so; as if love were a cause-effect equation where she could force my hand into falling in love with her. No, I love her because she is mine. Because there is an ideal world, and that world includes me in love with her, us loving each other. I love her because that is the task that God has given me: not that it is a chore, a Sisyphian struggle that I must simply undergo; rather it is a blessing and a calling that fulfills me when I do it, rather than draining my effort and resources.

“Don't care where we're goin’, just wanna be with you.
Put your head on my shoulder, tell me what you been through.
When I lose my focus, you remind me of the truth.
Lift us up to the heavens for a bird's eye view.

One woman for me:
Other half of my soul, you are my queen.
One woman for me:
Other half of my soul, roots of my tree .”
—Matisyahu “Unique is My Dove”

You may be wondering what more there is to say? Just a few closing statements: our story is not extraordinary, although for us, it is both ordinary and life changing at the same time. I doubt you have been able to glean life lessons from my words—you, reader, are probably wiser than myself. I hope you are left with the impression that this story is little more than mundane, because that is where I live, and that is where you live, and if you have found love, or if you are going to find love, I all but guarantee that is where it will be—in everyday life.

On the ninth of October, in the year of our Lord 2010, I took Elizabeth to the Smithsonian Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. A small white box in my pocket went off in the metal detector. Afterward, we had a picnic lunch at a beautiful park adjacent to the Washington Monument. After a considerable amount of wasting time and rambling conversation, I had Elizabeth stand up next to me, told her much of what you have just read, and asked her if she would marry me. When I pulled the little white box out of my pocket, I opened it upside down. She still said yes. There is not much more that I can tell you. You have arrived at the end of the story. But we haven’t.

“She keeps it simple
And I am thankful for her kind of lovin'
'Cause it's simple

No longer do we wonder if we're together
We're way past that
And I've already asked her
So in January we're gettin' married.”
—The Avett Brothers “January Wedding”