It was senior year of high school, 2018. I was excited to already be done with high school to start my career in the Navy. Mentally, I was already checked out with everything and everyone when it came to the next 10 months. Little did I know chemistry class would be where all of that changes.
I notice this one girl in there and obviously thought she was pretty. That’s the same thought I had with any other attractive female I’d see. But I always had the notion that no girl would want to talk to some kid who’s addicted to video games and paintball. That is until we got grouped together for a class project.
We bonded over something I thought no girl would even like, video games. I saw her playing an iPad game called Color by Numbers and I teased her for it because I thought it was silly to color that way. I would bite those words as I downloaded it within the next couple of minutes and both of us would show each other the different drawings we’ve completed.
Since that moment, I’ve grown more fond of her as we soon found out we had more to laugh about together. She quickly became my best friend as we would try to pair up in group projects, FaceTime outside of school, and she would even come to my wrestling matches (which she hated).
Coming back home from a family trip to Alabama, I remembered how much she loved white chocolate at the time so I bought her a bunch snacks and candy that had white chocolate on them. With that grab bag of goodies, I was going to ask her to be my girlfriend. Something I was very nervous about but I also didn’t think she was going to say no at this point because I was coming over to her house pretty much every weekend to hangout. The very next weekend, I went over to her house and surprised her with the bag of snacks just as we popped on a movie. She loved it (as expected) and I knew, “now was the moment”. As I asked her to be my girlfriend, my smile quickly faded as I heard her answer… no.
The main reason was our different spiritual beliefs. At the time, I was a Buddhist and she was a follower of Christ. I also changed my personality completely and became… well… a simp. After that much needed wake up call, I realized she was attracted to who I was when we were best friends and not some guy wanting to do everything she wanted. That brought us back together and we eventually made it official. A year later, I made the decision to follow Jesus and I wouldn’t have it any other way.