[Girl Blog] Marriage.

May 19th 2012

Today I'm marrying a girl that I didn't even know existed one year ago today. To me it feels so damn good and makes my brain want to explode. I can't sleep at the moment with so much excitement going on in my head.
I've been in many long loving relationships and many more short relationships where love was never even on the radar. I can tell you that sometimes, you just know. I have never been SO confident that the relationship was on solid ground and could last through anything.

I'm going to try to tell the story now.

I was in a relationship with a lovely girl named Ashely. She is pretty and very fun to pal around with. While I was with Ashley I became kind of depressed. We would go out with friends and have some drinks. We had group sex a few times with some friends that was pretty mind blowing. She was in her last year at College. She played video games... fell in love with Day[9]. We went to NYcomicon and PAX east to meet him and hang out and watch SC2. I met LiquidHuK and QxC at Comicon and met iNcontroL and djWheat at PAX. Fun fun times. We'd play Portal2 coop on our computers. She moved in to my house and we were attending my friends weddings together.., She was actually a Bridesmade at MY friends wedding. This went on for about 18 months or so. I was drinking more and more. I'd have "Breakfast Wiskey" and every weekend would end up being the same damn thing. Over and over. I felt pretty stuck. I wrote this song about it.

Well I could be a winner.
If I knew all the rules
And I could be a winner
If I'd just learn to follow all those rules

I don't want to live a normal life
I don't want to stay in one place
Everybody else is doing something fun and I'm stuck here

I don't want to know my neighbors names
I don't think they'd care much anyway
I just want to run around the world but I'm stuck here

(I'll post a video of the song sometime)

One day I was thinking about marriage and looking at wedding bands and all sorts of things. I wanted to be happier. I wanted to... maybe have kids and all of the happy things my sisters were doing. ( I have two nieces)


I thought about what it meant. What it would mean to commit myself to Ashley for the rest of my life. I was looking at rings and the ONLY two times I told Ashley that I loved her I was on my way to black out drunk. I'd commit myself to the same weekend over and over. I would certainly keep drinking. I was gaining weight. I felt like crap all the time. The only songs I'd play out at the open mics were sad songs. On Easter 2011 I had a complete mental breakdown. I was sobbing for the better part of the day. It just so happens that I met a different girl from three years prior on Easter day. That's a heartbreak story for a different time.

That day I broke up with Ashley. She stayed at my house in a separate room for another month or so while she finished up an internship in my area. I started rock climbing way more often than I had been and I quit drinking to intoxication.

I had met the last many woman in my life (including Ashley) on okcupid.com so I reactivated my profile on it. I decided I only wanted to get laid and make friends on there and I was very open about that. For a few months I met some nice people... introduced a few to rock climbing, went on some very light social dates and was feeling much better about life.

In early July I made contact with a girl that was so far out of my league on OKC that my first message was something to the effect of:

" Hi! I'm Charlie. You're way out of my league but I wanted you to know I think you're awesome and if you want to go rock climbing I'm always looking to make new friends."


The response was somewhat positive and she said that I seemed cool and she'd come out to my area and go for a walk with her dog and my dog.

Here's a little about Heather:

She's 31. That's Six years older than I am. She has a full sleeve tattoo on her left arm and many other miscellaneous tattoos including a mechanical heart on her neck, a praying mantis on her right forearm and a pot leaf tramp stamp. She has brandings on her arms that are so deep and the scars still bulge out after being healed for a decade. Her ears are gauged and her teeth are crooked like mine, she's very tall and walks with her feet out turned a little. She's thin and flat chested. She's just about the most god damn beautiful woman I've ever seen. We spent the entire day walking and talking and eating pizza. We never ran out of topics. I learned about her history a lil bit.

One of the things we had in common was that we both have ridden on the side of a box car. I'm a Conductor for the railroad. I have been for nearly eight years. I love my job. I am outside most of my workday and it pays really well.
She is a former Hobo. She spent the ages of 17-24 "traveling". Traveling kids are pretty obvious when you see them. http://lookatthisfuckingoogle.tumblr.com/ One of her friends made this website. He was recently interviewed on NPR I think.

They're alcoholic drug addicts that hop trains and bum loose change on the street. They'll rob you and steal your stuff to buy heroine. She's blown out veins from shooting up, she's ODed a few times. She's a convicted felon. Heather has been clean 7 years. She realized at 24 that she was going to die like many of her friends if she didn't stop. So she went to rehab. She attended a state school ( I think University of Maine and Oregon State) and didn't get much debt. Then she applied to Graduate school. She also applied to the National Science Foundation for a grant to go to school and was awarded it. The grant pays for all of the tuition and also pays a salary that isn't too shabby. So she picked Harvard University to get her PHD. She's an Evolutionary Biologist and studies immune function in immigrant populations.

That's right... She was a fucking oogle and now she's in her third year of a PHD program at Harvard. She just completed her Masters.


It sounds like bullshit but it was love at first sight.

I have never met anyone that appreciates life and how lucky we all are to be alive. She makes me feel like anything in possible. She has ideas in her head that no one has thought of yet. She's so god damn smart. She makes me think more than I've had to in a very long time and keeps me aiming higher. We rock climb together and stay fit. We eat the most delicious food and have the greatest feelings of happiness.

Before my grandmother died she gave out her jewelry to her grandchildren. Mostly just the girls got some but she took me aside when we were visiting for thanksgiving and mentioned she wanted me to have her engagement ring that my grandfather gave her nearly 70 years prior. Later that night when my uncle sneaked it to me I opened the box and knew without a doubt that I wanted Heather to be my wife. I asked her to marry me right then in front of Grandma Van and she said yes with no hesitation. I'm sad that Grandma Van passed away just a couple months ago and isn't there to see us be married but I'm so glad she was there for that important turning point in my life.

I am so damn happy. Today we'll be surrounded by friends and family. There is so much love in my life and I feel lucky. I've loved before. It's a great feeling. An even better feeling is the knowledge that we've made the commitment to never let it go. This is the last girl I'll ever be so close to. This is such a crazy idea it just might work. Here's a new song I wrote.

I woke up from the most unusual kind of dream
The hole I dug for myself started filling back in again
My brain kept asking me is this where we're gonna be dead?

Then my heart woke up in a room with the shades drawn to block the sun
There was light peeking through so I looked to see what it was coming from
A murder of crows came reaching down to hold my hand
They smashed all my windows to let the last of the summer air in

I went for a walk with the most usual kind of girl
She's lived on the moon but watching the world turn was boring for her
Now she takes samples and thinks of how the humans evolved
As it turns out we don't know it all cause we're doing it wrong

I picked her an apple and asked if she'd mind that I tag along
And now I'm in love with the most unusual kind of girl
I'm in love with the most unusual kind of girl.