I’m in the dark guest bedroom at my parents’ house, trying to fall asleep. My old rubbish laptop is lighting the room (I really should buy a new one when the Black Friday discount codes are released). It doesn’t have Microsoft Word or an “N” key, so I am forced to write in Notepad, desperately missing the convenience of Autocorrect, especially with words that have an “N” in it, such as “Notepad” and “N.”

I might as well be writing blind with two broken arms.

The goal, I guess, is to slowly soften the glow of the screen by filling up the white Notebook canvas with black words until my thoughts are out there as opposed to in here.

See, the last thing I did before I opened up my laptop was lie to my girlfriend.

There have been a lot of lies these past few weeks. This last one was a text-message-lie to tell her how cold it was outside on my way in to work in Maryland. Meanwhile, I’m nice and cozy at my parents house in Pennsylvania.

I have been pretty good with lying to her, though it hasn’t been easy. The closest I’ve been to getting caught was last weekend, when we were travelling through Baltimore. She grabbed my phone out of my lap to plug our new destination into my GPS. I snatched it back, making up some excuse that “I had navigation under control.”

But really, I didn’t want her to see where my GPS had taken me the day before.

Every weekend has its struggles. After all, they are our only days together each week. Last weekend was especially difficult since she knew she wouldn’t see me this weekend. Because I had to work.

A lie.

Not only would we not see each other for two weeks, but I’d also miss out on a party that her friends were having. I imagined the upcoming party through her eyes, a skill I have perfected since we started dating. She walks in alone, then spends the night observing all the other couples in loving embraces. In my imagination of her imagination, there is an empty chair next to her, which she forlornly glances at from time to time.

But…

That’s not how it’s going down.

She is going to walk into the party alone. That is a fact. But after she takes off her coat and says hello to the normal guests, she is going to walk further into the party and see that her friend from central Pennsylvania is there. And so is her cousin. Why would they have invited her cousin?

Wait, this is weird. Why are her sisters there? Dad? Is that you?

All at once, she will have a lot of questions, and hopefully they will all be answered when she comes around the corner and sees me, nervously waiting with a question of my own.

I can’t wait.

I can’t wait to tell her I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I’ve told her countless times. But I can’t wait to tell her I want to spend the rest of my life with her in the way that it was meant to be told: on one knee, holding up the ring.

I can’t wait to tell her how hard it was to lie to her for a few weeks, even if it was for her own benefit.

I can’t wait to tell her that I’m not a control freak and that she can look at my phone whenever she wants even to look things up on those reverse phone lookup websites. I just didn’t want her to see that the last address I plugged into my phone was her father’s so that I could ask him for his blessing.

I can’t wait to see the ring on her finger. I’ve been obsessively staring at it since I got it, like a character from Lord of the Rings. It’s driven me insane, just wanting it to be home on her finger, where it belongs.

But most of all, I can’t wait to start our lives together. Because life without her doesn’t seem possible.

And that is the truth.

-Youngman Brown

Written Friday, November 15

She said yes 🙂