Fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?

Let me tell you a story:

Last week I had a fitful night of little sleep and even less comfort. I had a great deal on my mind, as I have had during far too many segments of my life: money woes, upcoming tasks, ongoing stresses and conflicts. And as they do in the wee hours of the night, they all came tumbling in on top of each other, crowding together in the nighttime silence to vie for attention and leaving me no room to spin down and forget for a few hours. figmentj was lying beside me, not sleeping especially well herself for various reasons, and she heard me restlessly shifting, on the verge of giving up and staying online for the rest of the night. She asked if I was all right, and when I told her I couldn't surrender the worries she asked me to lie on my side facing away from her, slipping in until her chest was against my back, and held me close.

And in that moment, every last worry, every last evil little voice in my head that was whispering promises of failure and regret and fear, dissolved in a heartbeat. The difficulties I'd been pondering still existed, but in that moment in the safety of her embrace they were packed safely away, no longer a concern. The problems would be solved, and all would be well. And I slept.

I tell you that story to tell you this: as of this past Thursday, figmentj and I are engaged.

I realized as I sat down to write this that I've been deeply remiss in the storytelling department where she and I are concerned. Somewhere along the line, the purpose and contents of this journal changed—I used to delve into the inner workings of my relationships more, get more into how I was feeling on a week-to-week basis, do more outward processing, things I am loath to do now even behind a filter. I know I've talked about us being a couple, and about some of the things we've done together, but I haven't really talked about the hows and the whys of Us.

I haven't talked about the connection we share, one so powerful I swear it almost vibrates against our skin sometimes. I haven't talked about the communication between us, and how it has sidestepped both of our failings—things like my own tendencies to second-guess and over-think and walk on eggshells and tiptoe around every important topic, and her own failings that she would be the one to tell you about—and remained with us even when our words have stumbled in the short term. I haven't talked about our more intimate moments, ones which have seen us give of ourselves and take from each other and carried us deeper into ourselves and forced us to rethink the very definitions of who we are. I haven't talked about how our other relationships, be they friends, lovers, or something not so easily defined, have brought us closer together in ways that even all our poly theory couldn't have predicted.

And I haven't talked about the conversations we've been having for some time now, trying to draw the shape of what we are together.

I don't think I even talked about how we started with each other. We first met in shadesong and yendi's dining room as co-members of Team Venture during Blogathon '08. That day and night are something of a sleep-deprived blur, but I very much remember making eyes at this cute dark-haired girl I'd just met at the dining table, on the end nearest the kitchen; when she complained of back pain from so much typing, I offered her a shoulder rub, and she thanked me quite sincerely. We exchanged contact information, discovered a mutual interest in each other, and began flirting over whatever communication media were available.

The flirting lasted a bit but didn't really go anywhere, for reasons that didn't have much to do with us and a lot to do with the vagaries of long-distance communication. Just "one of those things." The funny thing was that we kept coming back to it: several months would pass in radio silence, we'd remember our interest in each other, the flirtation would begin again, we'd mention possibly getting together at a con or some place halfway between her and me, and then the whole thing would dissolve again. It was like we hadn't learned how to talk to each other yet, but whatever we shared that was driving us to talk in the first place refused to let us go.

And then came this past autumn, when we found ourselves flirting again (over chat, as it happened), and it was pointed out that I was now in Watertown, and she was a student at Mount Holyoke which was less than two hours away, and I had a car, and maybe it was time to…well, put all this flirtation to, well, a practical end. I hesitated for all of 30 seconds, mindful of how many times the possibility of getting together got mentioned and then set aside, before asking myself why the hell not and heading for my car. And two hours later I was in her dorm room, only the second time I had laid eyes on her in real life, and she was just as pretty as I'd remembered, and before we left for a walk around the chilly campus we set our nervousness aside to kiss just inside her door, and gods, was it lovely, and so was she.

I won't go into details about the rest of the visit (and certainly not in a public post), but something clicked that night. We met again not long after, and again not long after that, until we lost track of how much time we were spending with each other, two hour drives be damned. I was cautious about saying "I love you," not wanting to speak the words too soon, but I finally said it at the New Year, and when I said it, I meant it. Since then I've been amazed at how well the curves of my life and the curves of hers have meshed against each other until I lost the ability to imagine my life without hers nestled against it, and vice versa.

All along the way, we've never stopped talking about our relationship: where it stands, what it means, where it's going. We haven't always agreed on our answers, but have never stopped agreeing that continuing to talk, like our relationship, is necessary, worthwhile and right. More recently, we began talking about ways to acknowledge our commitment to each other, especially when we realized that the places where we differed in view weren't so different after all. We played for a long while with the idea of forming a "complicity" (complete with the exchange of "accomplice rings"), but all that began to change when we both had the same vision of what engagement is: not the time simply for picking out a dress and a reception band, but for figuring out what this thing "marriage" means to us, what we want and what we don't want, what we're committing ourselves to. Engagement, we decided, is not a statement that all the fear of the unknown has been conquered, but that we acknowledge that fear, and pledge to conquer it together. Not the next-to-last step along the road, but the first.

And so, in the middle of Diesel Café, just about the only place I could see this happening, I got down on one knee and asked her. She knew it was coming, but she stopped breathing anyway, and said yes.

We've got a long way to go. We're not even picking the date for a long while, not until we know we're ready for it. One statement that has been with us from the beginning is that we don't know what the future will bring. That's as true as it ever was, but we go on now with the certainty that we want each other beside us for the ride.

EDIT: Since we each like the other's post better, figmentj's post is right here.