Showing posts with label Ashley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ashley. Show all posts
Aaron and Aley are "Feeling Good" (First Anniversary)
For our first anniversary, Aaron and I retraced the steps of our first days in San Jose together. We walked across SJSU, ate at La Vic's and had a great time together reminiscing. He "surprised" me with this video of us and I "surprised" him with a Shutterfly photobook of our first year together. I say "surprise" because he helped me with mine and I knew about his. :-) We're just awesome that way. <3
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| La Vic's Burritos 4/3/12 |
Six Months
Aaron,
All my life I feel as if I've been settling for something less than happiness. Making someone else happy just seemed like the more important thing. Throughout high school (and even junior high school) I fantasized about what it would be like to be with you, or someone like you. You were the all-around gentleman who brought me roses he picked from his mom's garden on Valentine's Day and who rode his bike to my house on the weekends just to say hi. You formed the standard that I held the men in my life to. But none of them were ever able to meet those ideals that you set in place.
When we graduated high school, I assumed our paths would never cross again. You were in a relationship with a girl that I massively trashed with my friends and I was getting over a recent heartbreak.
Entering college, I threw myself into the arms of the first two guys who showed interest: the first lasting only a month and the second lasting four years. The Aaron James Neighbour standard in my head stood strong at first, but faded with time. I let myself be convinced that I didn't need a man who would protect me at any cost. I could take care of myself. I didn't need a man who opened doors and visited me on weekends. I truly thought I was happy, but there was always this nagging in my heart that I ignored. Part of me knew (or hoped) that I could be happier somewhere else. But I was too scared of the unknown to act on my feelings.
Three and a half years into my second college relationship, you re-entered my life like a huge burst of light waking me up. Just talking through Facebook and looking through pictures of the man you'd become awakened me to my old fantasies of you. I spent the next six months painfully aware that the boy I was with in no way met any of the desires you set in place when we were both still kids. You had just gotten out of your own four year relationship and were completely heartbroken. It demonstrated to me what I could be facing if I acted on that continuous nagging in my heart.
When my relationship of four years painfully ended, Aaron Neighbour himself was there to help me pick up the pieces of my shattered heart. You offered words of kindness and wisdom and reinforced the ideals in my head of what kind of man I wanted. I wanted you, but I was willing to settle for someone like you.
A short time later, we’ll just say you put the moves on me and took advantage of that mending heart of mine! Thank you so much for kissing me that night six months ago. You've shown me what life can be like. I'm happy—purely and blissfully happy. Life with you was everything I'd dreamed and more. I'm so glad I finally got my fantasy man.
So here we are, six months later. It hasn't been a century or anything, but I think it's a milestone worth celebrating. I just want to take this opportunity to put down in words how wonderful life has become now that you're part of my world.
I know I've told you this many times before—in this blog and countless times in person. But I have never been this happy. Deep down, I've always been a sad person, even when I had nothing to be sad about. I'd listen to sad music. You've heard my old playlists, so you know this! I'd watch sad movies. When a movie had a sad penultimate ending, only to have that glorious happy ending, I got upset. I wanted to see the sad ending, not the happy one. I couldn't figure out why couples in public would kiss and laugh and not be able to keep their hands off one another. I read love stories and cried myself to sleep at night, thinking I'd never know what that kind of love felt like, or thinking that it just didn't exist.
You've taken my dark existence and turned it into the brightest sunrise I've ever experienced. It was blinding at first, but now I can't imagine life any different. I've laughed more in the last six months than I've laughed in the last six years. I can't stand listening to sad music anymore and I'll refuse to watch a movie that doesn't end happy. I don't even bother reading romance novels anymore. Why bother? I've found the real thing. Being with you is the best experience of my life.
I love you so much Aaron James Neighbour. You make my life so happy and I hope that I give you even a fraction of the happiness you give me. Don't worry, I know in my heart and I can see in your eyes that you're just as happy as me.
So let's celebrate our first half year together. It's been unreal. Here's to at least another 199 half year anniversaries to come!
All My Love,
Aley
Stolen Kiss
In October of 2010, Aaron and I reconnected through Facebook. We became "friends" and he told me he had just gotten broken up with by his girlfriend of four years. I empathized and said we should hang out, though we never did. Over the next few months, I Facebook-stalked him and looked at every one of his pictures (numerous times), drooled over the obvious man he had become, read every one of his posts on his page and wondered what would have happened between us if I had just confessed my crush to him in high school.
Three months later, in January of 2011, I went through my own breakup with my boyfriend of four years. Remembering Aaron's identical situation, I called on him for help and advice, which he readily supplied. Our first Facebook conversation lasted about three minutes, ending when he insisted I call him so we could talk properly. We talked on the phone for hours about both our "formers" and the breakups that followed. He talked about how he wanted to take care of a woman: financially, physically and emotionally. He talked about how he loved to make home-videos and edit them himself, setting them to music and words--that way they'd have a great way to remember the past. He talked about all his artistic projects he's done, from a wire-based earring holder, to a declaration of love written on a piece of metal (so it could never fade). After three hours on the phone, I realized that my former was not the best person in the world like I had always thought he was. I knew then that there was someone better--Aaron. And even if I couldn't have Aaron, I could undoubtedly find someone like him.
Months later, on March 31, 2011, Aaron had just gotten back from a ski trip with his father and had planned to run the Carquinez Bridge that night, but had worn his legs out so much he wanted to walk it instead. Thinking of me, Aaron texted me:
Ashley!!! I just got back from tahoe a few hours ago and im just bubbling with energy, but because my legs are shot, so i was gonna walk the bridge tonight. I have the rest of my spring break nights all filled with friends and fun...but nuthin tonight. Anyhow, last minute, i know, but at anytime in the next few hours (could be as late as 10!!) would you like to take a strole across a beautiful bridge on a beautiful night with me :) olde friend. You should take me up on it. It is frankly a brillent idea :)
After hundreds of highly flirtatious texts messages the next day about everything from guys who prefer breasts over butts are better to the sketch book I bought him back in ninth grade, he invited me to hang out again Saturday night (the following night--April 2, 2011).
The next night, Aaron came to pick me up and then, unknowingly to me, drove me back to his house in Pinole. After re-meeting his parents and catching up with his sister Marissa (who was in my horn section in high school, so we knew each other well), we spent the majority of the night talking on his bedroom floor or playing pool in his garage.
At around 3:00 AM, we were on his bedroom floor talking about something unimportant while constantly flirting, when he suddenly sat up and stole a kiss. It took him eleven years to kiss me, and eleven years for me to finally know what it would be like to kiss him, but it was worth the wait. When we broke apart, he immediately did the thing all nice guys think they have to, and the thing all girls hope they don't: he apologized. I admitted that I had wanted him to kiss me all night and not to be sorry, so he kissed me again.
That night, while the sun rose through his bedroom window, we kissed like we had been waiting to kiss each other for a decade. It was the most romantic night of my life.
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| Carquinez Bridge "Functional Art" March 31, 2011 |
- Ashley
The Light of Newly Found Love
Some say we're crazy. Some say I'm on the rebound and he's just someone I'm stepping on to move past an old heartache. Others say we're moving too fast and need to slow down. I say: screw all you people!
Aaron and I officially got involved with each other on April 3, 2011 when he first kissed me. On April 5, 2011 at approximately 10:00 PM, Aaron officially asked me to be his girlfriend. At 10:15 PM, he told me he was in love with me. And at 10:20 PM, I admitted that I too, was hopelessly in love with him.
On August 13, 2011, exactly four months and ten days later, Aaron and I moved in together. The date, August 13th, alone means so much to me. It was my late grandmother's birthday and the only date we could fit moving into was that day. To me, it was fate and my grandmother's way of telling me she approved and that this was the decision that would make me happy.
Aaron makes me the happiest I've ever been in my entire life. I feel so light and so youthful with him. Yes, I'm only 23, so I'm sure without explanation, that comment makes no sense. My whole life, I've felt like I was forty years old. The term used is that I was "robbed of my childhood" at a young age. Whatever you want to call it, I was forced to grow up very young and never really had that feeling of a carefree youth. Aaron has given that back to me. Before I was this very serious person obsessed with my outward perception who couldn't lose control over anything or I'd go mad. Aaron changed that for me--and he probably didn't even know he was doing it.
This is how I want to start this blog. So many people are questioning the validity of my relationship with Aaron. What no one understands, is that it's OUR relationship. We make each other so happy and are basking in the light of our newly found love. No matter how many unwanted shadows thrust upon us in an effort to help, he and I are happy, and that should be all that matters.
So here's to the future of us. Ups, downs, in between. I'm excited to experience it all with the man I love so dearly.
- Ashley
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