Natural Ink: How Twitter Gave Me A Boyfriend

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

How Twitter Gave Me A Boyfriend

I've talked off and on about how Justin and I met, but I've never posted his version of it. I thought it would be cool to do both our sides it for this week's LDR post and give you guys a little more of a look into how we met because I know some people in his life back in California don't have the real story and some people that follow us along here don't really know the story at all.

Him: It all started with a discussion on Twitter. Authors Maureen Johnson and Stephanie Perkins talking about sexism in marketing with books and their covers and how stories containing romance are almost exclusively marketed toward women. Me, being a feminist and romantic, got involved in the conversation and they retweeted some tweets of mine about how I love stories about romance and it got a bunch of responses and I got a couple of new followers. one being Brittany. I followed her back and found her charming as hell. Adorable, and funny. She tweeted about having an anxiety attack and how nobody was helping her feel better, so I sent her some mental exercises in a link and gave her some kind words to help out since I too suffer from anxiety and empathized with her. She was amazed that a complete stranger would offer more help than anyone close to her. I decided that I would help her as much as I could whenever she needed it. We talked more and more, joking, flirting, and having much deeper conversations. I felt happy with her. I felt like she was actually listening and if I had a problem, she would help me. I was falling for her, and hard. My relationship at the time was coming to a much-needed close. Brittany was there for me. She didn't blame my anxiety and depression on me being selfish and wanting attention, like my then "girlfriend" did. I felt happy with her.  We started talking everyday and getting closer. I don't remember exactly how it went down but we decided to date. We had so much common and connected so well. That's just the beginning, of course, but that's a story for another day. 

Me:  I had been having a rough couple of months after seeing one of my best friends die. I had been drinking a lot and kind of drawing into my own shell and just wasn't doing great mentally. One way of escaping my own mind was to read, and I had heard a lot about Stephanie Perkins so I picked up one of her books and fell in love with her writing style. She led me to Maureen Johnson (apparently they're besties - how do I get in on that club?) and I read a couple of her books and also fell in love there, so I followed them on Twitter and didn't think much of it. A couple of weeks later I was up really late, not able to sleep, and checking Twitter and saw the discussion about their books being marketed towards girls and in all their retweets about the discussion there was one boy. The tweet read: "I'm a boy and I love love stories." I thought, How cute and clicked on the guy to see who had said that. I saw his picture and thought HE'S cute and I liked his feed, so I followed him kind of at random. He followed me back the next day and I honestly can't explain it, but I just had this voice in my head that kept going "Talk to him. Tweet him. Get to know him. You need to do this" which was weird because I wasn't very active on Twitter (I'm still not, sorry!) and most people I talked to were people that were not strangers. I pushed that thought aside some and carried on with my days, secretly checking his feed and liking his posts. One really rough night I was having a panic attack and I tweeted about it and, to my surprise, he quickly replied to me with some suggestions on how to help. I was a little stunned because most people in even my day-to-day life didn't help when I had a panic attack. They either didn't know what to do/say or how to help so they did nothing, or they told me to have another drink (which I usually did at the time). So for a complete stranger to offer his help was baffling, but much needed and appreciated. He helped a lot and kind of broke the ice between us. After that I kept finding ways to talk to him. At the time, he had a deaf dog so I tweeted him about teaching her sign language since I had taught several dogs strictly hand signals. After that we talked about small, random things and I found myself having the biggest crush on his mind. It wasn't until weeks later when I found out he had a kind of girlfriend but they weren't doing well at all (y'all have heard the horror stories about that bitch) and he couldn't wait to be rid of her. I didn't want to be any kind of rebound so I backed off some while he worked through that breakup - which didn't take long since they had been having problems for so long and he had been done with the relationship mentally for months - even before we 'met.'
We kept talking more and more and it was probably 3 months later (my crush was insane by this point) when he told me there was another girl there in California that he liked, but he also liked me so he wasn't sure what to do. My heart dropped and I thought, Of course. Of course there's a girl there. THERE. Not 3,000 miles away like I am. Of course this would happen. 
He was a little distant for a few days, I assume working out the feeling between the two of us, but then told me he liked me and felt we had something that neither of us could really explain, so he wanted to keep talking to me and me only. He started pulling me out of my shell and out of the deep depression I had been falling into. He cared about me, he listened, he made me feel amazing and important.
From there it slowly progressed into neither of us wanting the other to date other people and hey, we actually really like each other and...why don't we give us a try? We admitted those feelings to each other on May 24 (which is now our decided anniversary) and decided to date and become a couple. So, thanks, Twitter - and Maureen Johnson and Stephanie Perkins (both of which I've e-mailed about us and thanked them).

<3

Inspired by this LDR Writing Prompt: First Met

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