February 2020, through family and family friends I was encouraged to reach out to Matt. So I took a shot for it. Not having his number, I found him on Instagram and sent him a friend request. Within minutes of sending him the request, I was denied. A week went by before gaining the courage to send him another request. This time I also sent a message to him explaining the reasoning for the friend request and the people who had encouraged it. This time he didn't deny my request. From there we continued to message each other and text for the next 6 months before eventually meeting each other in person for the first time in August of that year. Unfortunately shortly after we started to message each other we were affected by covid. I was working long hours in the hospital and the world was pretty much on lockdown. During this time period I think it really helped us learn a lot about each other. We continued to keep in touch and talked almost daily. The days we didn't talk I think Matt was still reading and responding to my long text messages. He would give me a hard time about the length of the messages but for me it was a sign that he was easy to talk to and we always had things to talk about. We both had a lot of similar interests and hobbies. We're both close with our family, played sports growing up, enjoy going to concerts, going on adventures, being outdoors and working out. When we met in August it was love at first lift! We met during a workout class at tru fit boot camp class at 5pm. It was one of the only gyms open during that time period. I usually went in the morning but on that day, I hit the snooze button one too many time. I was forced to go later in the day and I met Matt not even knowing he'd be in that class. For the next few weeks we'd sign up for the same classes and talk after workout by our cars for a about an hour. Our first official date was a hike in Malibu and going to Tito's tacos for lunch. Matt made us an official item on August 22, 2020. Over the last 5+ years we have grown a lot together. Matt has shown me on a daily base what love is, as he encourages me to be the best version of myself, not a day goes by that he doesn't make me laugh. Matt is always encouraged with the love ,support and positivity that is brought to the table, he is always thankful for how promptly I get things done for us . We balance each other out very well, the team that we have become is something we will be able to build off of as we continue to build our future together. We are excited with what we've built and extremely excited about our future.