I grew up as a very shy boy, particularly around girls. I wholeheartedly believed that I would make it through my whole life as a student VERY single, and find a girl in my future workplace, hopefully in enough time to start a family. While I was fortunate enough to have had my first girlfriend by my sophomore year of high school, my many mistakes led to heartbreak, and at that point, I feared that I would never have a girlfriend again.

It came as a surprise that someone was willing to overlook all of the mistakes I made, all of the flaws I have, and be my friend when so many others had rightfully deserted me. It came as a great surprise to me that my life as newly single didn’t even last a year. It came as a great surprise to me that the girl is as kind, and as beautiful, as she is.

After the breakup with my first girlfriend I was the guy who would spend most of his weekends playing video games with friends (or by myself) or curling up in bed with a book, not the guy to talk to girls, hang out with girls, or goes to parties with girls (not that it was very different from my normal social life, especially after losing most of my friends, but that’s beside the point).

Since the day I first lay eyes on her until now, I have slowly fallen for her- her sweet personality, charming smile, good humor, astonishing kindness and selflessness, and of course, her stunning beauty- I could go on and on and on, filling up pages upon pages with adjectives that aren’t even close to describing how amazing she is. Since I’ve had her as my girlfriend, my sister says I’ve perked up. My parents have noticed I’m more social. The way that she’s impacted my life, even in the short year that I’ve really known her, has been nothing short of phenomenal, and I can barely put into words how unbelievable it is for me even know her, much less be liked by her.

We’ve now been together for five months. You can do lots of different things in five months. You can learn a new language. You can earn millions, if not billions, of dollars. You can travel around the world, by hot air balloon, at least seven times. I would say that that is pretty amazing, wouldn’t you? I find it even more amazing than that, that this girl has been able to put up with me for such a long time, which, even considering our distance from one another, with her being in Illinois and me being in Massachusetts, must be no easy feat.

We’ve definitely had our ups in our relationship: our kisses, our movies, lunch and dinner dates, both alone and with her friends, our conversations via texting, email, Skype, FaceTime, smoke signals (just kidding), our shopping sessions, our hanging out with friends and family, our attempted tickle fights (she threatens not to talk to me if I try to instigate one). I could go on and on and on and on about the amazing things I’ve done with her, honestly.

We’ve also had our downs- having met in a place where we were recovering from depression, some episodes of sadness, and lack of self-worth, have come up, and solving those problems for, and with, each other is difficult when we’re so far away. We also have our fair share of arguments stemming from many different things, from politics to religion to things I didn’t even know it would be possible to argue about (like, it’s quite obvious Dobermans are the best dogs in the world, duh). Through all of this, though, we’ve stood by each other and done our best to help each other overcome our issues and make it so that we are all good again.

As she looks to go off to college, I think that we both realize that keeping this relationship together is going to be difficult. Our lives will be so intertwined in so many other things in so many different places that finding time for one another will not be easy. However, while I can’t speak for her, of course, but I think that we’re both really hoping that this is something that will last for a very, very long time.