when I was ten years old I met this girl at my friend’s birthday party. she was cute, smart, funny, and loved Pokemon. at first, I just thought she was cool… she liked video games, wanted to play tag, let me show her how to stand on a skateboard without falling, and wasn’t afraid to go into the woods with me. she let me call her short and play with her hair… until I said she reminded me of the pink ranger and she hit me. that was when I knew this girl was something special.
when I turned 11 we moved back up to New York for a year, and I thought I’d never see this girl again. she e-mailed me a week after we had officially moved in and wanted to set a “play-date” for the first day I was gonna be home. I think that was the first time the word ‘love’ ever crossed my mind in the same sentence with her… but it may have been more like “man, this girl is weird… I LOVE IT.”
we moved back three weeks after my 12th birthday, and she and I met at the park by our houses and I showed her how to do a kick flip. now….. you have to understand something: she has no coordination what so ever. she’s the girl who trips over her own two feet —-literally—- on a weekly basis. so our little teaching session was full of her falling, me catching her, and then both of us on the ground whining/laughing from the pain and hilarity of the situation. after we mutually decided (for the sake of the skateboard) to stop attempting to teach her how to skate, we went for a walk on a trail in the park and came to this river… we climbed down the rocks to the river and I helped her jump from rock to rock to get to this rock in the middle of the river. we sat down and started talking about our favorite tv shows, what had happened in the past year, this boy that was in her class she liked, my first kiss, my sister getting grounded, my brother’s car, her little brother, etc etc. I remember I was telling her about my first kiss and mackenzie interrupted me in the middle of a sentence to reach down into the river and grab a frog that had been hopping around. she then threw the frog on my head… and told me to continue talking. that was the day she became my best friend.
when I met my first serious girlfriend, she had already been in a relationship for two years so I was always asking her questions. at this point, I was 14 and thought I was madly in love with hanna. we were together for a year and a half…. well, it wasn’t a very good relationship for either of us, and Mackenzie helped me through it. she saw every part of our relationship - the good, the bad, the horrifying, and the sickeningly “cute” - and stood by me through the whole entire fucked up thing. then about six months later, her boyfriend of 3 years and 11 months decided that he “never loved her.” it completely shattered her… and seeing her like that broke my heart. I think that was the first time I ever REALLY thought about my feelings for her. there is nothing that tests a relationship (in any sense of the word) than seeing the other person in it hysterically sobbing at 3 am on your doorstep. I remember opening the door and seeing her standing there wrapped in a blanket and all I could think was “Has she always been this beautiful?”
I asked her out at my brother’s party almost two years later. I was so nervous that I had like 6 shots of tequila before I went up to talk to her. and my best friend was so sure shed turn me down that he brought his video camera to permanently capture me getting rejected. God bless whatever/whoever decided to take pity on me that night, because for whatever reason she said yes to her drunken idiot best friend who knew she was still getting over her ex. that was a complication I was willing to deal with if it meant I got to kiss the girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
she is literally my better half. she is smarter, better looking, funnier, more loving, a better driver, more responsible and driven… she’s just everything I wish I could be. she is my first thought when I see the bracelet she made me in the morning and she is my last thought before I fall asleep on the phone with her. I know we’re both too young to even be thinking about marriage but we’ve already talked about it… and one day I’m gonna ask her. not in the near future, we both have school….. but one day I’m going to propose to her, and she’s going to say yes. in her words, “just so we can say we fucking did it.”
this is my girlfriends submission. this is my version of the story. baby, you’re amazing and I love you forever and a day. almost three years, and you’re still the best idea I ever had. March 9th, 2008 is still my favorite day of the year.
by anonymous