How my husband became my husband (Part One)

So, I stole this idea from a certain blogger, whose hilarious blogging I have admired for these past couple of years. I suppose this is going to be pretty confessional or something, but the thing is it's a really great story, better than most other stories I could think of to tell.

I actually remember when I first saw my husband from a distance. End of this May or early June will be five years since that moment. I had just moved to the DC area for a summer internship (not at all related to politics) from grad school and Colorado. This was right after giving most of my heart and soul to a master's thesis for the previous many months. I had also recently fell in with a group of hippies in the months before I left Colorado and had accidentally had a number of really weird experiences such that I was very very unsettled in my life. Anyway, I had hoped the escape to the nation's capital would provide for some normalcy and eventually it did--but it took a while. I moved into an apartment for the summer and the first time I saw LCD was in the lobby of that apartment building on my way to the store for some groceries. He was leading a group of some kind and standing on a chair to give them instructions. It was for a singles church activity that I had heard about but not planned on attending because I had a list of things to do. There he was, wearing a hipsterish straw cowboy-style hat and grinning with those pretty snaggly choppers. The sight of him made me smile and I watched for a few extra seconds before going on my way. I thought he was pretty cute.

In the meantime I was hearing about him from everyone that stopped by our apartment and saw my guitar. Everyone asked me if I had met this guy yet who also played the guitar. They said he was really good. Since I didn't really know these people I wasn't sure whether to trust their opinions and I did not realize they were talking about the same guy I had seen standing in the lobby of my apartment building, so I was only mildly interested.

When we met I found him to be one of the most amiable people you can have a first conversation with. He was and I'm sure will always be really easy to like. So I liked him, but I only really started to be interested in him when I saw him play. I have many times in my life heard people talk about how great some musician they know is only to hear them and think "yeah he/she's okay" . . . As it turns out, the rumors were true. Not only that but he played Jeff Buckley, which was almost too overwhelming for me. I had specifically taught guys I knew to play Jeff Buckley in Colorado, and this guy did a better Jeff Buckley than any of them by far.

Honestly, it freaked me out. I knew I had been through too much weird stuff recently and I was pretty depressed at the time so a big part of me did not want to develop a big crush on some guy that had all the outward appearance of being someone I would be really into. The timing sucked too much. I remember telling my friend from Colorado on the phone that I met this really seemingly awesome guy and it was a hopeless situation but I did not know if I would be able to keep myself from being really into him.

So I decided we would just be friends. I even went so far as to send him an email asking if he would be my friend. Yes it's true. Not very tactful, but true. I figured I would set it up from the beginning as us being just friends and that would a) make me happy to have such a nice hip guy as my friend when everyone around me seemed so frustratingly type A and b) keep my little wounded heart safe.

We became friends which was great, and my crush got a little more serious which seemed unfortunate but I figured it wasn't really hurting anybody. Then...oops...it started to hurt. You see my hip, new friend started dating my hip, new roommate. That's when I realized that the crush had really gotten away with me because it hurt like the dickens.

Later I was so grateful for this because it allowed me to get over my crush fast and decide he wasn't the guy for me. I decided I had been looking for the wrong thing--an image, an idea--when really I just needed a nice guy. This in turn gave us both the time we needed to develop a little more self confidence and become...well...happier. Because guess what? A relationship is a lot more likely to succeed if you are already happy.

End Part One