My baby.

in #writing6 years ago (edited)

When I first met Robert about 7 years ago, he was the QA manager at Edge of Reality. I was 21 years old and had gotten an interview and almost missed it because the bus schedule had been wrong and I'd called multiple people until I could find a ride. I was living in a punk house at the time with about 10 other people and I didn't have my own car. I went from the east side where I slept on the floorboards in a sleeping bag without heat, and cut my fingers on broken mirror glued to the walls, to the pristine sleek interior of Edge of Reality, where I was promptly sat down and interviewed by three people in a conference room. Needless to say, I was a little bit disoriented.

Robert was one of those people. I remember how straight-forward he was, not really looking up at me, but focused on the page of my resume. Everything he said was exact, focused. He didn't joke a lot. At the time, I knew he was gauging my reaction to his apparent stonewall, so I knew that i had to keep my cool. At one point he asked me as a test "If you're socially awkward, then how can you be good at communicating?" I remember I told him the two weren't mutually exclusive.

I thought I hadn't gotten the job. But he saw something in me that I didn't. So he hired me. The first day he sent me a message on the computer that said something like:

"These monkeys will want to sit around and guess what the problem is when they find a bug. You have to remember: Just the facts. Your job is to report." I remembered that forever. Just the facts. He taught me to be a good analyst.

At the time I thought I was useless. But he didn't treat me like I was useless. He gave me some of the hardest jobs in the department, and had me write our wiki for new people, because he said I was good at learning things and assimilating them - something I didn't understand about myself.

When my boyfriend broke up with me I got kicked out of the warehouse we were staying in and I had nowhere to go. Robert offered to let me stay at his old apartment, since he still had 30 days on the lease, and I could be alone. I went there with him and his girlfriend that day to clean it up. There was some whiskey on the fridge and a sword in the closet, and I joked about him leaving me with dangerous objects.

He told me, "If you're going to kill yourself, I'm not going to stop you." It made me realize that he recognized my autonomy, and he wasn't going to treat me like a child messing with playthings or trying to stick its finger in an electrical socket, like my boyfriend and friends had. This might have been one of the first moments when someone really treated me as an adult.

I'm not being dramatic when I say those 30 days changed my life. It was the first time I had ever been alone. It gave me the space to really breathe and sort out my life.

But he recognized that was what I needed, before I did.

And when he left to go to a job in Canada, I bawled my eyes out in the car on the way home that night. It felt uncomfortable - who cries for their boss? I didn't know it but I already loved him then. I loved this strange, misanthropic, older, brilliant man and my life had become better just by knowing him. He was the first person to really show me how smart I actually was, that I was capable. Not because he was benevolent, which he was, but because he SAW it inside me.

And everyone who knew him had an experience like that with him. He helped everyone.

3 years later I was visiting Austin from Seattle and he came to the party I was having at a bar. He had moved back from Canada. He didn't have a girlfriend anymore. When I got home we began talking to each other. At the time I had a fiance, but I had already been planning to move out of our shared apartment because we were driving each other crazy. Robert recognized why I was so miserable. I felt with him I finally had permission to realize that being me wasn't wrong, that i had been denying my own self its expression and life, and that's why everything was falling apart.

A month later I left my life in Seattle and moved in with him. Impulsive, maybe, but everything inside me was screaming to me that I wanted to be with him. I was having dreams every night of the city collapsing and falling into his arms. I knew that if I ignored this I'd regret it for the rest of my life. I wanted to be finished with ignoring the things that I desired, because it was killing me.

Today is our four year anniversary.

People always asked me why I moved back and I'd tell them "for a boy." They'd roll their eyes or tell me that was stupid. I'd say "not really." I have never regretted it and I never will.

I get asked, "What's the right time to move in with someone?" or "how do you know you're in love?"

To me that's like asking "How do I know if the sun is in the sky?" It is so direct and obvious. It is crystalline and pure in its understanding. There is no maybe in my heart. There is only yes.

I can say that I didn't understand what love was like before I met Robert. The gulf of my understanding was as vast as the difference between sadness and depression. And he has continuously shown me how someone who is loving should act. He has never let me down when I truly needed him. He has been patient with me as I try to change old and destructive patterns. The me that I am now is unrecognizable from the me that I was 4 years ago. I'm better in every way - my body, my writing, my mind. I no longer cry for days in abject and hopeless misery. Because of him.

(He would say to me now if we were talking about this "Because of you. You did all the work." Because that's just who he is.)

I don't talk about this much, but everything I've written in the past couple years has his thumbprint on it. Every story, every poem, every article - it is something that we have talked about and he has helped me reach an understanding on. Robert has helped me become the best version of myself. Whatever the future holds he's in my DNA now.

I told him once with tears in my eyes that I'd never be able to pay him back for everything.

He said his payment was my happiness.

Robert is the real deal. The world is better because he is in it. And I hope this year and the next and the next he works on becoming the best version of himself, and we can do it together.

I love you baby. But you know this already.

Sort:  

Cute couple :D Roberts are the best :P

Sounds like you really love each other. I really hope the best for both of you!

You have suffered a lot. And you have difficult experiences to congratulate you on this and wish you a happy life and peace of mind

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

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