Right Person, Right Time — The Long Awaited Summit of an Uphill Climb

Amber B. Garma

“Do you think this is weird?”

We’re both sprawled out on my mattress. I’m reading the latest e-book I bought, and he’s reading a manhwa online.

“Do you ever think it’s weird that you have a girlfriend? That you’re just lying down like this, on your phone and everything and there’s just someone beside you?”

“Yeah. I think about that a lot.”

I think about it a lot, too. I think about it when I’m washing up before bed, and I come out of the bathroom and Ben’s there. Or when I’m bringing over my laundry and I realize my sack of clothes isn’t weighing my left arm down. Because Ben’s carrying them. And now we’re two people, walking down the street I’ve lived on for years, heading over to the laundry place.

Ben and I have been together for eight months now. We had been unknowingly dancing around each other all throughout our senior year of college — hanging out in the same places and running through the same jogging routes at night. But right before graduation, a shy exchange of Instagram DMs rapidly evolved into romance. Soon enough, we found ourselves graduating together, starting our first jobs together, helping each other move into our own places, and just navigating this entire new chapter of life, together.

And despite the regular struggles of adulthood, including the involuntary long distance caused by work trips that never seem to match up, we’re having a great time! We love food. It’s the life-force of our relationship. We use our date nights and date breakfasts and date lunches to discover new restaurants. We love seeking out the small, family-owned ones that could use an Instagram shoutout, or the ones that have been around for so long that their menus are faded at the corners. We love to read together with our legs piled on top of each other. I tease him by saying “let’s talk!” just when he’s about to fall asleep. We have our own rotation of inside jokes and cute-ified words we say in place of other words.

We recently spent five days in his hometown of Malaybalay, Bukidnon. That trip was where I realized I really loved him. We were sitting together on a hammock, looking over at the most beautiful mountain view I’d ever seen. We had just visited the village of his tribe, the Talaandig, the last stop of the five days I spent traveling with him, meeting his friends and family, attending wakes and birthday parties of people who have made him who he is. Weighing his personal history against my own, I looked over at him and told him, “A girl like me was meant for a guy like you.”

—

I love Ben so much, but I often find myself wondering how I got to this point. I’ve had boy problems since I was six years old. I’ve never made it to an anniversary (well, this one’s still up in the air). All my life, I’ve struggled with the unending thirst for male validation, closely followed by the desire to rid myself of every bit of it.

I dedicated the last eights months of my college life to the ultimate boy detox. After I unceremoniously exited a short-lived romance at the beginning of senior year — so short-lived that even I was disappointed at myself — I decided it would be best to retire from boys entirely.

It was for the best. I poured myself into my hobbies, my friendships, my organization work, and into crawling towards graduation. It was the most at peace I’d ever been. I felt the freedom I had been searching years for. To be single and not be mid-yearn. To be single and not make vague promises to “do better” in my next relationship, because there didn’t have to be a next relationship at all. To be single and actually have the space to be my own person, instead of a collage of curated Instagram stories for an audience of one or two or three.

Six days after we began talking, I asked Ben to take a risk, without any certainty that I was willing to take one myself. I had told him about my commitment issues, my love for the chase, and every implication that he could be my next casualty. But when he asked if I was worth the risk, I said yes. On the brink of adult life, a phase I was sure I would embark on my own, I was asking a boy to give me a chance. This time would be different, I told myself, because I was different. But would this be another fluke? What made me so sure I wouldn’t want to run away from this, too? How long did I have before my history caught up with me?

Well, there must have been a reason I asked my father to come meet him a week after we started dating. There must be a reason I jump out of my seat the moment I hear him knock on my door, no matter how many times it’s happened. There must be a reason I swerve over to his place past midnight, even if I have to leave at 6 AM to make it to my morning meeting. I used to dread nighttimes, because nighttimes are when all the uncertainties pour in. But now I think about our wedding day before I sleep, and I’m not afraid of jinxing it. I can daydream instead of dread.

The reason is that Ben is a good man. He’s soft-spoken, and kind to animals and people, and has the most warm-hearted smile. He can get along with anyone, and he goes through life with a kind of positivity and ease that I can only dream of having. The reason is that we make so much sense together, that a guy like him is absolutely meant for a girl like me.

But the reason might also be that I am a little different now, after all. They do say you can only bash your head into a wall so many times until you just can’t anymore. Maybe my boy detox was a miracle pill. Maybe my prefrontal cortex development department started working overtime. Maybe I’ve met my soulmate. But regardless of why, all I know is that love is easy now. Life is hard, but love is so easy. I’m 22, building my life with someone I love and trust. I don’t think the grass is greener on the other side. I don’t try to hurt him before he hurts me. I’m learning to love up close instead of from afar.

I’m tempted to disclaim that I know this may not last forever, out of fear I’ll look back at this essay one day and feel stupid. But this is an important document in the history of my small life. That after years of searching and yearning and leaving and resigning to my fate, I’ve arrived here at love’s highest peak. I know what love is, actually. I know how to love somebody. Apparently my mistakes and my fears have wisened me, but they haven’t taken me whole. There’s no end to the horizon, and no rules about coming down before the sun sets. It’s just me and Ben on opposite ends of a hammock, listening to Hozier singing:

I wish I could say

That the river of my arms have found the ocean

I wish I could say the cold lake water of my heart

Christ, it’s boilin’ over

But it happened easy, darlin’

Natural as another leg around you in the bed frame