Let My Shoes Lead Me Forward

Let My Shoes Lead Me Forward, Jenny Wilson

I found him.

I'm not quite sure why or why it took so long, but I found him. And he found me. Apparently, I've been someone's dream girl like, in quotes, like, someone's "Dream Girl" this whole time. His. His dream girl. His "Dream Girl." There's this bear and he's been far and near and far and near and now he's far again and, this whole time, he's been stuck on this idea of the perfect girl, this elusive tall brunette, that's even what he calls it. He tells me that it's a joke now between he and his friends. He's been wondering if she exists this whole time and maybe a bit, when he believes that she does, where the Hell she is and why he hasn't found her yet. At some point along the way, he's totally lost faith that she exists.

And then he finds me. And it's not that easy, but he has. He's found me. Between one single friend and three thousand forty miles, some bit of data has passed his way and this bit of data has given him the hope that maybe she exists. Right now she exists. She's existed this whole time. And this whole time she's been me.

I don't want to give anyone the wrong idea, I don't wholly believe that I'm actually someone's dream girl or "Dream Girl" or whathaveyou. But it's nice to hear it and it's nice to think about in that way. It's nice to feel found. The way we talk, the way we are, on the phone, on text, through videochat...I tell him that I'm only 94% certain that he's the one for me, but I'm lying. I think a part of me knows that, while he's found me, I've found him too. That he's this guy that I didn't believe really existed either. How I've never felt such a lack of compromise in what I've wanted in a man the way that I feel it in him. How I could never find a thing to want him to change. Not, at least, now. How, most of the time, I'm fighting for relationships. How I'm, always, fighting for relationships. Fighting to prove that I'm the one, that it's the right time. Because I've been ready for something for a while.

One night, during one of our dates, we're talking and watching each other talk and thanking Baby Jesus for the technology that allows us to do so, we're considering writing Thank You notes to Google for their videochat, and I tell him, "That's it? That's all we had to do? Just find each other? Now we're done?"

He expresses that same kind of wistful incredulousness about the whole thing.

"If the worst part of it is the distance," I tell him, "then it's nothing. Then we're so good."

And I mean it. Most of the time, the distance isn't a problem. We have a plan. We have an end goal. Unlike with Long Distance Filmmaker Ex, there's a plan. Back then I wasn't ever going to move. I wasn't ever going to visit. There was no future ambition whereby we would end up together. Not for me, anyway. For him...he wanted to marry me. I guess that's when all the problems really started. The marriage talk. The way I told him that the only way it could possibly work out involved him leaving everything behind and moving here, to Miami, to a city that didn't have a place for him because I wasn't even guaranteeing that it would work out. The minute I saw him, I knew. The minute he put his arms around me, I was sure. He wasn't the one for me. He wasn't going to last. I'd just continue compromising until I couldn't anymore. And for as horrible as I feel about it now, I didn't then. We offered one another something that was important. I offered him a wonderful girlfriend who needed him and needed romantic sensitivity. A girl like that he couldn't find in San Francisco or LA. He offered me security. He offered me consolation. Someone to talk to. A man that could love me. The faith in finding the one elusive man that I felt I could truly be partners with. But he wasn't that guy. He's not. That guy. That guy is someone else. I think, for my own part, that I've found him now.

God, I hate to admit it.

The idea of admitting it, even on a blog, even to myself when no one's around to hear...that idea is a terrible terrible murder. It's tantamount to sabotage for me. I tell him that it's terrifying and that I'm scared. Though I'd dropped the ominous "What if"s about a week ago, I can't help but, even for a moment, consider the possibility. Those previous "What if"s were all about whether or not I would like him or him me, in person. The "What if"s now...they're so much more.

"I have a feeling that I'm going to hold you and I'm never going to want to let go," he tells me.

"What if we're terrified?" I ask. "What if, right there, at the airport, the minute that we first see each other...what if that's when we know?"

"I don't know," he offers.

"I guess."

"We can't know," he tells me.

And he's right. We can't know. There's no way to answer that question. The only thing we can do is keep with the plan.

"If we see each other twice a month," he says, "I think that we can be happy with that for a few months." He chuckles. He's thinking of the end goal. He's thinking that he knows it won't stay that way. That, if it really works out, there's no way we'll be willing to stay apart for that long.