Looking back on how Lindsey and I first met, I'm amazed at the series of events that had to take place in order for us to meet, even though now it seems like our meeting was inevitable. For me to meet Lindsey, I had to:

(1) Start writing music, film, and television reviews for a specific web publication;

(2) Join certain social media websites in order to promote my writing;

(3) Follow certain writers on those social media websites;

(4) Follow a friend of one of those writers on one of those social media websites, Twitter.

One day, while scrolling through Twitter, I saw a writer that wrote for the same website I contributed to making jokes with a friend of his. I laughed, and out of what is undoubtedly my greatest stroke of instinct I decided to look at the profile of the woman with whom this colleague of mine was exchanging jokes. Upon seeing her picture I, with years of study in the field of English and the degree path toward a PhD also in English, eloquently thought to myself:

"Man, she's really hot."

I followed her Twitter account, and to my surprise she followed me back. Months later, she shared an excerpt from a book by one of my now-favorite authors, Maggie Nelson, Bluets. I was taken by what she shared and decided to purchase the book. For some reason that I couldn't know at the time, I went out of my way on a trip to Seattle to the Elliott Bay Book Company and purchased it. Nelson's writing floored me, and when I finished the book I reached out to this woman that at the time was just a digital profile on my laptop screen to me. To this day, it astounds me how a far-off person can come to life in what seems like a second's time.

We began chatting over Twitter, and then over Facebook. From that moment on, I cannot remember a time when I wasn't talking to Lindsey. Right away I admired her goofy sense of humor, her Christ-like spirit, her emphasis on the importance of family, and her skill as a writer and reader. When we talk about a book we've both read, or a movie we've both seen, I'm consistently awed by her perceptiveness and intelligence. Both remind me that she will always put me in my place, which is something I will always need.

In just over two years we've been through so many transformative experiences together. I spent a summer in New York to be near her. She moved out to Austin not long after that. We jointly rescued an adorable puppy together. When I finally got down on one knee and proposed to Lindsey after a dinner with her family in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, it felt like years had led up to this pivotal moment, even though it was only two.

In thinking back on that moment I am reminded of a quotation from a favorite film of mine and Lindsey,'s, Big Fish. The main character in that film says, "When you meet the love of your life, time stops." With Lindsey, I have discovered a truth even greater than that. When I met the love of my life, time slowed but our experiences together proliferated. The clock, it seems, has always moved slower than our lives. By the time we get married on March 30th, 2019, Lindsey and I will have been together for just over three years, but I will always feel as if it's been longer, as if we've been able to live out a lifetime already. And I cannot wait for the many lifetimes I get to live out with Lindsey, the woman I am far too lucky to spend the rest of my life with.

Wedding Party