I feel like this story belongs on the blog because, at this point, it is an integral part of my life. When I was thirteen years old, if you told me I was going to meet my future “one” I would have thought you were crazy. To be fair, at the time I thought I was going to marry Zac Efron or Justin Bieber. I was flexible on which, but it had to be one of them.
Middle school was exactly as it should have been. I was awkward, with severe acne, a questionable sense of style, and an obsession with frying my hair with a straightener each morning (it was the thing to do in 2010, okay?). Friday evenings were spent getting ready for school dances or chatting with strangers on Omegle, and my LG Shine flip phone was my portal to the world outside of my house.
During these years, I had a very distinct group of friends for a short-ish period of time: John, Seth, Patrick, Mirari, and Chandler(any guesses on which one I ended up with before you read on?). We would spend time together after school, either walking to each other’s houses or begging our parents to give us rides. I’ll say this here on my blog, because I’m not ashamed to admit it: we were definitely the weird kids. I was in denial about my membership to this group, so I wouldn’t generally hang out with them outside of our neighborhood meet-ups. At dances, I hung around the “cool” kids- emphasis on hung around, because I was certainly not included. So, I generally ignored the group in more public setting (shallow middle-schooler alert!). Eventually, our friendships fizzled out because we were all in different age groups, but a couple of us stayed more distant friends.
Sophomore year of high school, I was reconnected with a member of the middle school group: Chandler. I was close friends with a girl named Monica that lived next-door to him. She was hanging out at his house on occasion with a group of kids from our school that I wasn’t well-acquainted with. One night, she invited me to one of their get togethers. Chandler was the only person I knew there besides her, so, naturally, I clung to him. This started a series of events that resulted in us dating on/off for the remainder of high school (there are some tremendously hilarious stories to come out of this time, but we’ll save those for later).
After high school, some residual disdain spread between the two of us that led to five years of no two-way communication. I say two-way communication, because during this time I tried to reach out to Chandler to no avail. He was generally dating someone, and when he wasn’t, I was. None of this communication was flirty (replies to Snapchat/Instagram stories in a very casual manner), but I wanted him to be my friend.
Then, came 2020. At the beginning of this year, I was in a very serious three-year relationship. Chandler was in a year-and-a-half relationship. We hadn’t been in contact for nearly five years. My relationship had come to an end, and so had his. I was in the process of moving to Georgia from Nevada, and he was in the process of moving from one side of Florida to the other. In May, he asked me if I wanted to come visit. It was supposed to be a four-day trip for us to reacquaint and for me to get some much needed beach time.
This four-day trip turned into a forty-four day trip. By the end of it we had decided the only logical thing for us to do was date, since everything seemed perfect. Here we are, months later, and I can confirm: everything is perfect. Never in my life did I think I would end up with Chandler, yet here we are!
I’m not putting this on my blog to brag about my life or my relationship. This story makes me happy. If I could go back and smack 13-year-old Carolyn on the head and tell her to date the dorky boy in 7th grade, I would (and do the same to Chandler to date the dorky girl).
Since I’ve talked this man up so much in this post, the least I could do is plug his Instagram, @gassysoclassy.
Chandler, if you’re reading this, thanks for being my person, Dingus.
Casually Carolyn 