when you think taylor swift, i hope you think of me.

the title of this post is a lyric from a popular taylor song called tim mcgraw (but obviously i changed the lyrics a little bit). as i was sitting in a random building waiting for my next class, this song started playing. i had head phones in, don't worry. and it brought me back to the summer before my senior year. the summer that things with ryan and i started. the summer i will never ever forget. we started becoming good friends in april 2011. and by good friends i mean i would text him every day and he's so nice that he didn't ignore me. and by that i mean i was really annoying and persistent. he was different from anyone else i had ever known. he made me genuinely laugh and he was funny. i had finally met my match, because before this i didn't really know anyone besides myself and my dad that made me laugh so hard it hurt. yes, i make myself laugh and i tell myself jokes when i'm bored and i think its so fun. oh ryan, he was SO funny. i can't emphasize that enough. anyways, as girls often do, i started liking him. unlike anyone i have ever liked before. ever. i'm talking, changing-lyrics-to-taylor-swift-songs-in-the-car-with-my-friends-so-they-fit my-situation kind of like. [some background information here--ryan was the groolest guy in school. and i was such a freak and i was weird and goofy and my idea of fun was seeing how many cookie dough bites i could eat.] so i was definitely surprised that our friendship got really strong and i had a raging middle school girl crush on him, and maybe he liked me too? (spoiler alert, we are currently dating so hopefully he likes me)! i remember every detail of those days. i remember going to salsaritas with him before a cheer meeting and i ordered this big ole plate of nachos and when we sat down to eat i nibbled on one chip the whole time because i didn't want him to see how much of a savage i was. he asked why i wasnt eating and i told him i wasnt hungry. such a lie. he was supposed to just drop me off at my meeting and then that was it, but we wanted so badly to hang out that he waiting an hour in his car just so we could hang out longer. thats when i suspected, okay maybe he does kind of like me too? soon enough we had a talk. we told each other we liked each other in the food lion parking lot but (that stupid but) he was leaving for college on July 6th and it was already 10 days into June. We liked each other a lot, but the timing was off. we remained friends and continued to hang out the same way we did. and then camp came. we were both going to sharp top cove, a young life camp in Georgia, sometime in late june. we both were there to show others how wonderful living with Jesus is. during those 7 days i missed him so much. we were so focused on our reason there we couldn't hang out much. but one night there was a "hoe-down" type thing. and right before we had to go back to our cabin, they played one last song. and it was a slow, sweet, love song. i wish i could remember what it was but i don't. another one of my friends asked if i wanted to dance and i just stared at him and then looked at ryan. a second later ryan asked me and obviously i chose him (wow i'm such a brat). i was dying literally dying inside. i was slow dancing with ryan zinkhan!!!! so the song ended and the people running the camp were handing everyone an ice cream sandwich. as ry and i were walking back to our separate cabins he stopped me right before the bridge and said (trying not to laugh) "the way your eyes shine put these georgia stars to shame tonight--thats how it goes right?" in response to that, i took some of my ice cream sandwich and wiped i ton his face. i don't even have to explain how i was feeling but basically thats the moment i decided i couldn't let ryan go. he understood me and did things to make me happy even if it was silly. a couple days later we got back on the busses and started our way back to virginia. i had to tell ryan how i was feeling but we were on separate busses and my phone was dead. so i wrote him a note explaining to him that he's going away to school and it would be hard but there is something between us that can't be explained. i spent probably 3 hours perfecting that note and it probably had less than 70 words on it. then i spent 2 hours planning out with my friend michelle how i would give him that note. it was at a rest stop at like 4 in the morning--how romantic! we got back to fredericksburg around 7 and i had no idea how ryan reacted to the note because my phone was still dead. so i went home, plugged my phone in and fell asleep. i woke up to a text that said something along the lines of "i agree". so thats how we got here. over 2 and a half years later and i still get giddy around him. this is so cheesy, but there is something magnetic between us. when everything was working against us, we still stayed together. and i love him to pieces and love Who our relationship is about.

then:

                                                                               ice cream on his cute face

now: