love story: getting real [part three]

during the crazy that is wedding week, i thought i'd share the story of how Ben and i met and fell in love. our love story, if you will.

these are scheduled posts because i'm not crazy enough to try to blog and get married at the same time.

don't you worry.

if you'd like to follow along with wedding week in real life time, as it happens, i'll be  the bride tweeting and instagram-ing away at @wildchild_jack.
[you can find the beginning parts of our love story here].

happy reading!

summer ended as we slowly, hazily transitioned back to school. i moved my things from home into a new dorm room and classes begrudgingly started up again. things were kind of hazy with my girlfriends because Molly was upset with me for dating Ben, but thankfully, Ben's friends accepted us with open arms. thank the Lord for those guys because i was feeling so alone without those girls.

we slowly got into a routine of classes during the day, dinner together with the guys in the evening and then homework in one of our rooms. after a carefree summer virtually by ourselves, it was a little tricky to balance the responsibilities of schoolwork, jobs, friend relationships and our own, but with some trial and error, we figured it out.

days went by of passing each other and stopping to say good morning on our way to classes, finding little love notes in my mailbox a few times a month, and learning how to function as not just a summer couple, but an autumn couple too. but then winter came.

right around six months of being together, things started to change. Ben got distant and scared and to make a private story short, i realized i wasn't being treated the way i deserved to be. i ended things one night in his dorm living room. i spent the night on my couch with my true girl friends, alternating between hating him and missing him already. we had a heated texting conversation [oh, technology], and i fell asleep thinking we were done for good. 

but glory glory hallelujah, when i woke up the next morning, there was a message from him telling me to check my mailbox. i got ready as fast as i could because i knew mailbox meant letter [duh] and letter meant my love language. i didn't care if it was a bad news letter or good news letter [obviously i was hoping for a good news one], but i just wanted to see his words on a page. that's how i communicate the best; words are my crack. anyways, i opened my mailbox to an envelope so thick that it barely fit in there. he had written me pages and pages of letter apologizing, explaining, asking, telling. he was trying. and he wanted to keep trying. so i let him sweat it out for the day and texted him later in the evening, saying that we could talk in the morning.

as much as i wish i could say that i stayed strong until the morning, i didn't. that night, Ben came over and we talked things through and i decided to give him another chance. we were a non-couple for just over a day, but that day broke my heart.

that fall, when things were still okay.