If there was any tiny little sliver of doubt in my mind that she was the one for me, that doubt has been shattered.

These past two days have given me a glimpse of life without her. It's a life that I'm not interested in living.

When I wake up in the morning in my empty bed I don't feel those bolts of excitement and happiness. I don't feel that bristling energy that pulls me out of bed, into the shower, and into my car. I feel nothing.

It was bad today because I didn't think I would be able to talk to her. But I did, and I'm feeling a little better.

It's just that all of the incredible feelings that wash over me when she's around are completely across the country right now, and I'm having a hard time dealing with it.

When she's around I practically float from place to place. I've got this stupid smile constantly plastered on my face. I feel like I could face the world and come out unscathed.

I just feel sort of alone right now.

Thank god for the books she gave me. They're like a tranquilizer. They keep me calm and complacent when I'm reading them. But I can't read ALL of the time. Those slivers of day where reading is impossible; when I'm driving, when I'm just getting to work, when I'm at the paper, those are misery. Because my thoughts catch up to me.

What if she gets hurt? What if something happens way out there? Does she miss me as much as I miss her? Is she thinking about me?

Ugh.. I've got to go read....

Please come back to me in one piece. I won't be able to live without you.

What a day... 5:13 PM

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My goals... 9:30 AM

This is somewhat of a response post... it's a list of things I want to do in life.

Drive to Alaska
Learn to surf in Hawaii
Drive across the country in a van with a bunch of close friends
Make out on the beach as the sun sets
Ride a donkey down the Grand Canyon
Take a ride on a horse through the country
Learn to play piano
Ride in a hot air balloon
Join the mile high club
Purchase a tailored suit
Party until the sun comes up
Go to that tomato throwing thing in Barcelona or whatever
Drink fresh whiskey in Ireland
Purchase and learn to use a D-SLR camera
Get my own column in a newspaper
Drink freshly brewed coffee in South America
Go skinny dipping (not alone)
Visit Banff National Park in Canada
Learn to snowboard
Help rebuild a house in New Orleans
Volunteer in a soup kitchen on thanksgiving or Christmas
Read all the great literary classics
Learn French
Crash a grad party or wedding
Learn some epic dances before I get married
Eat stinky tofu in Thailand
Go to one of those epic water parks from the Travel Channel
Visit Dubai
Sneak into Tibet
Learn to eat and enjoy grits
Write a vegetarian cookbook
Own my own fruit tree
Start composting my old food
Camp near a waterfall
Get motorcycle license and drive one through the hills of some foreign country
Build a humongous sandcastle and snowman
Volunteer in an AIDS clinic in Africa for a couple weeks
Explore Giza and Egypt in general
Start a charity or non-profit
Eat fresh cheese and wine in Italy
Take train across Europe and backpack for a couple weeks
Pet a bear
Have a caricature made of me
Record my own songs and give them to friends
Build a tree fort with my children
See a tornado
Go to burning man
Go to a really high, dark place to look at the stars with my love

I will add more as I think of them.

A letter 11:09 PM

Dear Cutie,

This is the beginning of a love letter.

The reason I say that this is the beginning of a letter, and not a complete one, is because I will never be able to explain exactly how I feel about you in one little blog post. However, I think it will be a good start to a letter that I plan on writing every day, for the rest of my life.

I'm not even sure how to begin this... you are everything to me.

When I joined the paper, the only things that I really had on my mind were that I would be meeting new people, maybe I'd gain a friend or two, and I'd have a good time. If you would have told me that 1. I'd meet the perfect girl 2. she would eventually fall in love with me and 3. that perfect girl would actually only live a few miles away from me... I totally would have laughed.

We faced our first setback when we were both staff writers at the same time. I was a shining star at the news desk while you dropped the course. It didn't matter, because we would meet later. You were a writer when I was an assistant editor. You were cute, and from Lockport, and I noticed you. However, you always ran away right after class and I didn't get much chance to talk with you.

Flash forward a couple of months. We had a little discussion about which writers we wanted to make assistants. You were a clear, unanimous decision. I was excited... you would be my assistant. We went to Chefs for our little Christmas party and you looked so cute. We got free cheese bread. Haha

Flash forward to the next semester. I had a thing for you, but as soon as you muttered the word "boyfriend" I dropped back. I didn't want to be that guy again.

Fate would play us differently.

We went to Sole a few weeks after the semester started. You asked for a ride. I said, sure, why not? We were talking on the way there. It was honestly some of the best conversation I have ever had with a girl that I knew so little about. We seemed to have some sort of connection, though at the time I could never have predicted its magnitiude.

Still, we both pushed on with our separate relationships for some time. My little crush on you grew slowly, yours a bit more quickly.

Then came the bigger setback. You went to NYC on a trip with the others. I didn't. You got close with someone. I didn't like that. When you came back and were being overly friendly with him, and when other people were saying things, I withdrew. A lot. My heart can only take so much before I go crazy, and I could feel that old familiar pain.

I upset you. I'm sorry. I will never make up for that mistake, though I plan on trying.

Still, we watched our stupid videos, we laughed and joked occasionally. I never stopped liking you. In fact, I could feel it growing stronger every day, despite my attempts to keep it at bay.

Then came the ball game. You were drunk. So was I. A creep kept hitting on you. I switched over to protective boyfriend mode... something I wasn't expecting. Then you went missing. That's when I clicked. Searching through those wide halls of the stadium, I knew I wouldn't be happy until I could call you mine.

Everything progressed from there, slowly at first, but more quickly later on, until we reached the point we're at today.

When I first saw you in late August/early September, I would have never guessed that we would end up together. There is no way I could have known you were the perfect girl.

We click so well on every level.

We laugh, we joke, we read and eat and sleep. We write and edit. We talk, we stare, we taste and touch, smell and listen.

Every single on of your qualities matches up with one of mine in some way. You are the pickle to my peanut butter. You are the ketchup to my grilled cheese. You mean everything to me and more.

When we were made we were set apart. And I have to speculate that God himself did make us into corresponding shapes. Like puzzle pieces from the clay. So brown eyes I hold you near, cause you're the only song I want to hear. A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere.

It kills me to know that you were so close before, just right down the road, and we could have never met.

You and I, the couple who can talk about anything, laugh about anything, and do anything together. We could have never met. It's so scary, yet it fills me with a sense of fulfillment. We did meet, and things are perfect.

I wake up every day to your beautiful face on my mind. I fall asleep every day thinking the same. Every second in between is for you. You are always on my mind. Your love is always in my heart.

I'm very lucky to have you and I plan on keeping you forever. And when forever is over, I'll keep you one more day.

You make me believe in soul mates and providence and fate.

I love you. I always will. That's a promise I will never break. My heart won't let me.

-Ren

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Coming soon... 1:32 AM

I was going to write a really epic post tonight but I got tired all of a sudden.

Expect to see it soon.

...no crescendo? 8:50 AM

I honestly believe that this is a mountain without a peak.

I keep climbing, higher and higher, every day.

Just when I think I can't possibly love her any more than I already do...

...just when I think I have climbed high enough to push open the gates to heaven...

...I climb even higher, guided gently from behind by her calming winds.

Still, my legs are strong, my heart is pumping, and my dreams are set...

I could climb this mountain forever.

And I will.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

I know what they want and I know they don't want me to stay 10:40 PM

Pro: she actually has friends and spends time with them.

Con: she doesn't really talk to me much when she's with them, but I can understand that.

The pro outweighs the con in this situation by a landslide, I know from experience that girls without friends are absolutely nuts, but that doesn't mean I still won't be a little sad.

Plus there's one that I don't really trust...

I just need to hear her voice at least once a day. Is that so much to ask?

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

I love Dave Eggers 1:09 PM

We are disadvantaged but young and virile. We walk the halls and the playground, and we are taller, we radiate. We are orphans. As orphans, we are celebrities. We are foreign exchange people, from a place where there still are orphans. Russia? Romania? Somewhere raw and exotic. We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole, the nascent suns burst from the darkness, from the grasping void of space that folds and swallows - a darkness that would devour anyone not as strong as we.

Secret garden.. 8:52 AM

We went for a walk the other day and found the most amazing, pretty little patch of flowers nestled deep in a hillside on the Northern bank of the Erie Canal. The colors were a stunning mix of purple, white, and the most natural green I think I've ever seen.

What makes this patch of heaven even more special is the fact that probably nobody else has taken the time to notice it, and nobody else besides my girlfriend and I can understand just how perfect it is.

I think that our secret garden is a very fitting allegory for our relationship.

There have been, and there continue to be, problems with people who just don't get us.

I had to give a strong lecture to several of my cousins because they chided me for entering a new relationship so quickly after an old one ended, and for spending so much time with my new love.

Similarly, I faced some initial problems with friends due to the fact that I was single for only four days and now I spend a significant amount of time with my new girlfriend.

Now, it seems like cutie is facing the same problem.

People on the outside just don't get our relationship. We are remarkably close. It's almost like we complete each other. We are puzzle pieces designed to fit together.

At the same time, we're fine to spend some time apart, but people just assume that we can't be split up for a few hours so they don't even bother to ask.

The song "Such Great Heights" by the band Postal Service seems 100 percent suitable for life right now.

They will see us waving from such great heights,
"come down now", they'll say.
But everything looks perfect from far away,
"come down now", but we'll stay...

I think it was Dwayne in Little Miss Sunshine who said; "you do what you love and fuck the rest."

no worries. 12:58 AM

A very wise friend (!) once told me that life always seems to work out. And even though I already had adopted that philosophy as my own, at the time it helped out more than she knew.

Today, I got my financial aid figures for next semester. Prior to recieving these, I spent a lot of time worrying about how I was going to make ends meet during the school year.

I'm not sure if the numbers went up because my mom lost her job, or if Obama had something to do with it, but now I'll be able to quit People Inc. with no worries (yesss! FMJ!).

I'll also have enough money to hit up Shea's a few times with cutie and buy her some sick Christmas gifts (I have so many ideas). It would be sweet if the boss could hook me up with that phone job too, for added economic security.

That's not all. The title of this post has sort of a double meaning...

Cutie, I know your friends made you sad, but life always seems to work out. I have you, you have me, and together we can work out all of the problems that life throws at us.

I promise.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Today... 8:42 AM

So I haven't slept since yesterday. I'm tired and feel gross and I have to go to a stupid board of directors meeting at the paper. I have to write an article about swine flu and I have to put a journalist portfolio together. Next week I have to edit a bunch of lame articles.

But that doesn't matter. Because I get to spend the day with her.

And that makes everything better. <3

The beginning of the end.. 12:23 AM

I didn't wake up this morning and intend to have a perfect day.

Every day in the past three weeks has been fairly close to perfection. It just turned out that this one was particularly special.

I'll abbreviate, because what we did is much less important than how it felt.

We made pasta together. We ate cannolis. We took a little snuggle nap and then walked along the canal bank. We got ice cream. We had a little play time. Then I went to work.

Millions of people probably did many of those same things today. Hell, I've done most of those things in the past (except the cannolis... Mmmmm).

But how many of them would consider this the perfect day? How many of them had the best day of their life? How come it never meant this much to me in the past?

Love makes everything shiny. It makes everything new. It takes over your life and your mind and your soul.

You can feel it in your bones when you wake up in the morning and she's the first thing on your mind, and when you fall asleep at night and you can still taste the sweet touch of her lips.

I could have never imagined that such a random assortment of events would lead to a perfect day But that's another thing I've learned about love--it just isn't predictable.

For me, today marked the beginning of the end. Every tiny little lingering doubt in my mind was eliminated without mercy (not that there were many in there).

I'm hers forever.

Welcome to the rest of my life.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Everything is new again. 4:08 AM

Ren has come back to the world of blogging. And I can finally write what I feel.

I almost gave up on life.

Literally.

Just two months ago, I was at the point where simply jumping off of a very large bridge to meet my flattening demise sounded better than carrying on the way that I was. Not that I was ever suicidal or anything, but life just didn't seem worth living.

I was trying to make something fit that simply wasn't working. And I was doing it for a long time. And it hurt.

Flash forward to now. Life is just ridiculous.

I feel like I'm learning to ride a bike again. Except it's almost like I never knew how to ride a bike in the first place. Everything is new. I'm feeling emotions that I never even knew existed. I'm doing things that I've done a million times in the past and took for granted and enjoying every second of it. And it all feels new.

Kissing. Oh my god. Kissing has never been this good. Kissing and touching and holding hands and cuddling... I never knew it could all feel this amazing.

I'm pretty sure it's safe to say I'm in love. Completely. 100 percent. Hopelessly.

And I wasn't before.

There is still work to be done. I'm still exorcising demons from the past relationship. I'm still figuring out that I don't have to feel guilty for doing the things I love anymore. I don't have to feel like I'm doing something that will piss her off when I'm happy.

But the fact of the matter is; life is perfect, and I'm in love.

I will be blogging more about this soon.