We met in 8th grade (though Blake only remembers me from high school..) when Blake's family was stationed back in my hometown. We quickly became friends during our freshman year of high school during football practices and our shared lunch. We bonded over my Spongebob Gameboy and our love of Rob Zombie and other great music, and we always made sure to stop and stare wide-eyed at each other any time we passed in the halls. After sophomore year, the army took Blake's family to California and we moved on with our lives. Fast forward to 2019, eight years after we first met, Blake was back in my hometown which I never left. Things weren't necessarily going great for either of us until the night we met back up. We met at a bar and stayed up talking until the next day, and never really stopped talking ever since. I remember going home the night after the bar and writing about my soulmate in my now-lost journal. It was love at first wide-eyed stare.