part 2: when love sits just across the table

I wasn't looking for anything serious when I started dating Mark. I knew that I was going to be leaving Utah at the end of year, and that Mark wouldn't be. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it didn't really make sense to get into a relationship.

But it was so easy to talk to Mark and we always laughed so hard when we were together. I was incredibly drawn to who he was and so when we kind of just fell together naturally, I couldn't bring myself to do anything other than just live in the moment and forget about the future for a while.

Two weeks into our relationship, I was planning on going to Yellowstone with a bunch of friends. I debated on whether or not to invite Mark, because a weekend trip seemed a bit intense. I decided to invite him anyways. Spontaneous adventures are a huge part of my life, and I figured he might as well get introduced to that as soon as possible. He said he would come! He came, and the adventure was 100x more fun with him around. When we cuddled in the car as we drove from place to place in the park, I thought, "I could do this for a long, long time."

Yellowstone National Park

Mark has always liked surprising me, and he has always taken me on incredible dates. Whether to art museums, live music shows, ice palaces, the hot springs, frozen waterfalls, or Antelope Island, I am always shocked by the amount of thought that goes into them. He finds all the best food places around, and most of my favorite restaurants in Utah are places he's taken me. The German delicatessen and Bruges Waffles in Salt Lake City! That one pho restaurant in downtown Provo. Tacos 180, where I would be perfectly happy eating lunch for the rest of my life. The Lebanese restaurant with the best chawarma. The Mexican place where we had those amazing papusas. And so many others.

And all the simple things too. It was studying together in the library, and sneaking kisses in the product development lab between homework problems. It was me having a difficult and long day on campus, and Mark surprising me with Thai take-out for dinner. It was all the other countless times he brought me food on campus when I thought I was too busy to eat. It was doing Taco Tuesday every Tuesday night at Del Taco (don't ask me why I'm so obsessed--ask Mark) and running to In-and-Out at midnight. It was all the good night texts and the best hugs in the world. It was me realizing that my hand felt empty when he wasn't there to hold it. It was him hugging me till I didn't need it anymore that one night when I was upset, even though he was incredibly busy but too kind to tell me he had a billion other things to do. I didn't find out about that until the next day when I asked him about it.

It was him always supporting my dreams and helping me pursue my goals. How he embraced all my idiosyncrasies. It was his open-mindedness and his love for others. The way he just fit in with all my closest friends. The way he talked about his family. The way kids just seem to adore him. The fact that his family is amazing and instantly made me feel like I belonged. His adventurous spirit, his passion for life, his gentleness, his patience. How he could kiss me and make everything else disappear for a while. The way seeing him could instantly make a bad day better.

I'm not sure what I"m doing, but this was such a fun night in
SLC with Chelsey and Trevor.

Then all of a sudden it was November. I was so sick of school, and Thanksgiving break was coming up, and I was feeling restless. We were studying in the library, and I turned to him, and I said, "Babe, would you want to go to Arches with me? Let's go camping!"

He didn't even skip a beat, "Of course."

So we went camping in November among patches of snow. It was wicked cold, but it was so fun. Something about shivering and cooking hotdogs via lighter fluid because the wood is wet is a real bonding experience. We went hiking all day and I had never been happier.

One of the trails had a really steep dropoff and the entire trail was solid, slippery rock steeply slanted towards the drop-off. It was a dangerous trail, but we needed to get past it to get back. There was a huge bottleneck, because a bunch of other people were having the same problem. Mark got me down the trail safely, and then he went back to help everybody else, because honestly, that part of the trail was terrifying. Guys, grandmas, little kids, everybody. There's no way everybody could have made it down safely without him. We were probably there for around an hour.

One of the first groups of people Mark helped was this guy's wife and little girl. They watched everybody else trying to come down the trail for a while, and the man was like, "Wow, if your boyfriend is going to help everybody, you're going to be here for a while." We chatted for a while and then they left. About a half hour later, I saw the guy come running back, and he said, "Here. Take your man out for a nice meal afterward. He deserves it." He pressed something in my hand and ran back in the other direction. It was $40.

Mark did finish helping everybody down eventually, and we made our way back to our campsite. We did go have a splendid meal later with the $40, but I was more just in love with the way that it was so natural for Mark to stay and help until everybody had been taken care of, regardless of the fact that it was time-consuming and inconvenient. That's just who he is, and I love that about him.

Arches National Park

Amidst of all of this I was applying for grad school. I talked to a professor from NC State on the phone and he said, "Well, how about I just fly you out here? I'll show you what we have to offer myself." So he flew me out to North Carolina in the beginning of December.

I went from subzero temperatures in Utah to 65 degrees in North Carolina. Dr. Klaenhammer picked me up from the airport that evening and I instantly liked him. He showed me around the city a bit before dropping me off at my hotel and letting me know that he was having some grad students pick me up for dinner.

I went to dinner with two grad students who worked with Dr. Klaenhammer in downtown Raleigh, and we had a great time. I learned a ton about the program from a student's perspective which I loved. The next day I talked to a ton of faculty in the NC State Food Science Program. And everything about it just felt right, and I knew that that was where I was supposed to go to grad school. I had been so so stressed about it all semester long, but that weekend in Raleigh just settled everything for me. I just felt so good about it.

It wasn't until the airplane ride home that I didn't know what to do. I had been upgraded to first class, so I sat in this big chair in the dark in the front of the plane and sipped grape juice and tried to decide where Mark fit into all of this. And I didn't know.

But when I walked out into the airport that night, I saw him and I jumped into his arms and he gave me the most massive hug. He whisked me away to The Bayou, a jazz bar with incredible Southern fare in Salt Lake City. We sat at a table close to the band and it was amazing. We both love jazz, and The Bayou has the coolest atmosphere. I ordered gumbo. He ordered pasta. We talked, and I gushed about NC State, and we both kind of avoided the elephant in the room for a while.

And then he said, "I don't know if this is the best time to discuss this, but what does this mean for us?"

I said, "I don't know." My mind was rushing with a thousand different things, but I didn't know how to put any of it into words.

And then he said, "I love you."

And I still didn't have an answer for what was going to happen or how we were going to make it work, but all of a sudden I knew and I had words for what I wanted to say.

And somehow I was brave enough to tell him I loved him too.

He said, "I love you, and I want to try to make this work, even if you end up going to NC State."

"Me too."  And I meant it from the bottom of my heart.

Being in love is a wonderful, exhilarating, terrifying feeling. Love has a way of spilling into your life like water into the cracks of the pavement, making its way into crevices you didn't know existed. 

It came uninvited and unexpected, but it somehow managed to be the biggest feeling in the world. 

Go to part 3: in which we defeat the monsters