Blogging: A love story

I fell in love with J over the internet. No, we did not meet online. No match.com story to share; no E-harmony tv commercial in the making. But for me, our love, MY love of him, hatched with the special help of the blogosphere. And today, I remembered why.

As I have mentioned before, J and I were friends for quite awhile before anything relationship-y happened between the two of us. I have promised to tell the story of our romance on several occasions throughout this blog, and today is as good a day as any, given its events.

J and I were friends. Well, no, that’s not quite right. J and I were classmates. He was the cocky guy that sat across the room sipping from his Thermos of coffee and bugging the hell out of me. The professor of the course, even if he had tried, could not have assigned the two of us as better point/ counterpoint sparring opponents. J made me crazy. Who was this guy? Clearly, he had no idea what he was talking about and just liked to hear himself speak! I believe at one point that semester I actually just turned to him and said “Wrong. You’re so wrong,” in response to his rebuttal of a point I was making. I was so exasperated with arguing against his blather, that I literally had lost all my fight. (P.S. J, if you’re reading this. I know now this is your strategy. When YOU know you’re full of it, you simply just argue until the other person concedes. I’m on to you, buckoo.)

Early in our second year of grad school we attended a conference together with several of our friends. We were both happily involved with other people at the time, but I remember that conference being the first time I ever really saw this kid as someone I could hang out with (without wanting to punch him in the face.) He was actually pretty smart. He was very funny. And interestingly enough, suddenly he wasn’t so bad to look at.

After that conference we came back and took more classes together. At that point, we were buddies. Oh, don’t misunderstand, we still fought all the time. But somewhere, somehow in that trip he had gained my respect. He was still wrong a lot of the time, but I was finally able to hear his side of the story. He was fairly articulate when he wasn’t spewing wrongness.

It was about that time several important events coincided. First, he graduated with his master’s degree from the program we were both in (I was staying on to do my PhD work.) Second, he was getting promoted to a new rank in the Army. And third, he was getting deployed for a year to Iraq. These things were clearly a cause for a party!

J likes to say that irony follows him everywhere. The number of ironic happenings and details that came forth during J’s graduation/ going away/ promotion party, well…let’s just say it was an epic evening and leave it at that. And it was at that moment, that night, that I realized that somehow, for some crazy reason, I actually cared about this kid leaving school and going to war. I was going to miss having him around. And I was actually worried for his safety. I don’t know why this was a shocking discovery to me, but it was.

When he got Over There that time, his job was considerably more dangerous than I had realized (thank God I didn’t know that when he was there. Ignorance was complete bliss.) At the time, I think he felt rather isolated. And very much like me, when he felt alone and had too many thoughts in his head, he needed to write. Writing got ideas and confusions, festerings and musings out of the noggin and on to the paper where they could be looked at objectively. (We are so much alike in this way, he and I.) And so, because his need-to-write hit a critical mass, he began a blog.

I remember the first time he wrote. I was fascinated. All the way Over There, he was writing about the sorts of things that I often pondered. He was asking questions, probing questions, and on occasion posting inflammatory statements (probably only inflammatory to me) that I had to respond to. I had to respond. It was what I did. I argued with him.

In the background of all this madness was the fact that he and I were both in bad relationships that neither of us wanted to admit were on their last legs. But we didn’t know that about each other. We didn’t share that. That wasn’t the sort of thing that we talked about. We talked about ideas. We talked about abstract concepts. And we wrote. It started as short, supportive one line responses after his blog posts. But it grew into after-the-fact emails of great length which often strayed from the original topic at hand into the more intimate details of regular life.

I loved feeling connected to him in this way. When he left, I had decided that I would head up the “we need to send care packages to J” team here. I took great interest in gathering goodies from all his friends and putting together care packages. And every time we sent something, I would take the time to write J a letter. A real, on stationary, in cursive, handwritten letter. It became one of my very favorite things to do in all the world.

As cheesy as all the online dating services are, I have to admit, there is something to be said for getting to know a person through the written word first. Even though we were pals before, as we started writing emails, debating through blogs, trading care packages and letters, we started to get to know one another in a way that I don’t know if we would have otherwise discovered. I felt like through the ether of the interweb we could write things that couldn’t be said, that wouldn’t be said face to face. Hopes and dreams, secrets and fears sent safely out into the night: These were the things we could talk about from 7000 miles away.

Even as I was dating someone else, I found myself waking up each morning to read his blogs; to check my email to see if there was any word that day. On weeks when I wouldn’t hear from him, I grew impatient and sad and worried that something had happened to him. Somehow, through his blogs, I had grown to really know him in a way I never thought possible. Come to find out, I cared about this man. A lot.

And then, there was the inevitable breaking point. My boyfriend at the time (I can hardly say “boyfriend” really, as we were so close to calling it quits at this point we were clearly just going through the motions) had brought home some war-type movie that depicted the horrors of the war in the Middle East and discussed in detail how miserable the soldiers were who were there. I made it about an hour in and started crying. And I couldn’t stop. And then, I just simply got up off the couch and drove home. I was done. I sat at home for hours wondering what had caused me to do what I had just done. And then, finally, at about 3 in the morning I wrote the email that would seal the deal for me. “I know this movie was Hollywood and ridiculous and I probably shouldn’t have watched it and let it upset me so. But you should know, I don’t know why I feel this way, but I need you to come home. I want you to come home. I want to see you...need to see you.”

And the rest is pretty much history. He had been feeling the same way and discussing it with our mutual friends. He came home, and thanks to the special help of his blogging, we started our relationship not at step one, but on about step twenty-seven.

All of this was clearly on my mind as I started this blog, my blog for me and for him, as he went back Over There. And while everyone can read what I’m saying here, he has the power to decode from this what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, and what he means to me. This blog has more or less become my wartime love letters to J.

So why do I tell this story now? Because today, today J started writing his blog again. Beyond the fact that I’m grateful that he has a venue to get the head clutter out again (which I think he so desperately needs right now), reading his writing again is a constant reminder of how I fell in love with him and why I continue to love him so. Whether he means to or not, his blog, regardless of what he says or talks about, serves as his love letters to me.

And yet again, I swoon.