Jeff: One of my friends told me that there’s a meeting in Chicago seven days a week with this amazing woman named Kimmy. I logged into Zoom (for the first time ever mind you) and right away I heard the voice of a woman talking a mile a minute, spouting experience and hope like I’ve never heard before. She was a little blonde post-it stamp, greeting people and I was sitting in the darkness, trying to stay in the background. The first thing she said to me was “Hey, you, are you a Zoom bomber? Are you in your parent’s basement? Do you play video games?” I didn’t know what a Zoom bomber was, but she was talking to me. Kimmy: I’m surprised you came back. Jeff: I was looking for a way to get closer in the sea of Zoom squares, and I found “pin” - my screen lit up and there she was. I actually took a deep breath. Kimmy: You liked me right away? Jeff: I liked you right away. Kimmy: I did look cute on Zoom. He came back every day and the one day he wasn’t there I texted him - ‘hey, people missed you’. Jeff: She spoke in Canada (on Zoom) and I went to that. She was fantastic. She lit Canada up. And afterwards everyone was gushing over her, saying things like ‘Kimmy - oh my god Kimmy, your story is just so amazing.” And I had never heard anybody like her. She was on fire. People were totally listening. And I had never heard her story before. Oh and she sent me one of her blogs and I read it. Kimmy: You were supposed to read all ten of them. Jeff: I invited my friend Roger to the meeting one night and when he joined on Kimmy took her glasses off - and I was like uh-oh. She likes him. Kimmy: It was just a little startling, I just happened to notice! His eyeballs were right there and they were so blue! Jeff: And right there she starts sweating and tells everyone she’s having a hotflash. “Ahhh Jeff…. Jeff who?”

We started talking all the time. We would stay on after the meeting wanting everyone else to leave, and then we’d stay up late talking on Zoom every night. He used to have his cat in his lap during the meeting. I was so jealous of the cat. We didn’t meet in person until May. Jeff: I remember I would joke, “What if I just showed up in front of your house, sitting on a bench?” Kimmy: I would love it because I always wanted to be stalked. Jeff: The day we were finally going to meet in person, I went out and bought a brand new outfit. I was so nervous. I was sitting there like a kid in my front yard, waiting for her to come down the street. And I’d walk towards the end of the driveway and see a car coming so I’d run and sit back down. And then finally she calls me and tells me she’s got to go to the bathroom. So she rolls into my driveway, almost into the grass, opens the door, gives me a hug, and goes “where’s your bathroom?!” Kimmy: I was about to wet my pants! I almost ran you over in your driveway. Jeff: Kimmy kept saying “What happens if you don’t like me when you meet me?” Kimmy: I was self conscious. Jeff: When I hugged her for the first time I thought she’s even more beautiful than I thought she was going to be. Kimmy: And you were worried you would be too short. Jeff: You were worried I would be too short! Kimmy: We started spending every weekend together. We were like little kids on playdates who had never had this before. We never have had this. Jeff: I’m feeling feelings I’ve never felt before, and I did not know how to handle my emotions. Kimmy: We broke up for ten days. Jeff: Oh you wrote me the best break up email ever. Kimmy: Oh I did write a good letter to you for that. What did I write? Jeff: She broke my heart and I went crazy. Kimmy: You just ate a bunch of Reese’s, you didn’t go crazy.

I remember Jeff said “We’re 50 years old. We deserve to be happy.” And that was really meaningful. Once we made that decision, once he said that, I feel like I was completely in. We fell in love very quickly. We were both crying a lot - we cried a lot in the beginning. We were so grateful. I felt like God and my Mom brought him into my life, and he’s gonna be here until God takes him out. (They say you date your dad, but you marry your mom.) He wrote me the most loving messages. Jeff wears his heart on his sleeve. I felt so lucky… [reading old text messages from Jeff] “telling you I love you doesn’t seem like enough. I want to write it in the stars and spray paint it onto the moon… I keep thinking about how wonderful your hand felt in mine… I love being with you. It comes so natural. It was very hard for us to be apart. We used to get into fights when we were apart. Jeff: Yeah Fridays were usually ‘let’s brawl and make up’. Kimmy: Yeah, because I hadn’t seen him all week. And you know it’s funny because you always said, when we live together it’s going to be good. And it is, it’s been so natural. Jeff: That’s the thing about living together. I think when you find your person, you just want to be with them. Like Kimmy and I, I’ve never met anyone I want to be with this much. I want to be with her all the time. We don’t even have to be next to each other or talking - because even if she’s in the house… as long as she’s in the house. We each do our own thing and yet still feel together. Like family. What I used to always do at night is I would look up at the stars and wish for someone to love. You know, and love me back the same. And every time I would throw money into a fountain… and there she is. And I could have never dreamt of Kimmy because I couldn’t imagine someone this amazing. And so my dreams were always falling short, because she’s more than I ever could have dreamed. Kimmy "Aww you're so amazing, I'm the lucky one"

I’ve had a house - Kimmy made my house a home. I proposed to her on May 17th, 2021. On Zoom!! It was amazing! I had no idea! Kimmy: I’ve never felt this way about somebody… Love is an action - and there’s this strong pull or desire to take care of you. Like there’s not one selfish thing about either of us when it comes to this relationship. You know, before you get into a relationship you think oh my god, there’s this perfect man out there who’s going to bring all of this to my life. He’s going to make me happy, he’s going to love me, he’s going to be this kind of guy–and what you don’t realize in the fantasy world is how much it’s going to be like what can I do for them? What can I bring to them? What can I give to them? Jeff: And I think that’s what made it so hard for me after my accident, is that I couldn’t take care of her back. I was stuck. Kimmy: It was really hard for him to accept help. But I feel like everything I wanted or needed–I mean Jeff is just such a good good man, like always. I mean even things we get into arguments about, like I’ve never felt so safe. Safe is the word. Home is the word. Family is the word. Right away Jeff felt like family. Jeff felt like a piece of me, like a missing piece really. It always kind of felt like that. I never felt safe, or like anybody really got me. And I have lots of people in my life who love me, lots of people around me. But it’s always felt like nobody knows me–nobody loves me like Jeff. And I feel like I am totally 100% myself with him. And I don’t know, I just feel like Jeff is my best friend. I don’t have as much fun with anyone else, or as much understanding, or deep shit. Like nobody knows everything about me except Jeff. The only person on the planet. And I know I’m the same for him. And people know me, I mean I’m pretty transparent, but, there’s like a deeper core - and it’s not like frivolous. It’s deep shit man.

Sometimes when we get into an argument the little child in me gets really scared that all of this is going to go away. A lot of times my emotions don’t match the situation. But I know he’s all in. We’re both all in. And when people say that it’s work, I will say this: it's the graduate school of recovery to be in a relationship. We have a lot of single friends that wish they were in a relationship and I say don’t think you’re going to get out of this world without doing this work. Because being in a relationship takes work. And I’m not saying it’s hard or bad work - it teaches us about ourselves. It teaches us about God. It teaches us that as much as we can care and love and support a person, we’re not entirely responsible for them. It’s loving someone unconditionally. And loving ourselves unconditionally too. Because there might be things where we think, I wish you did this or that differently but I felt like I had to do work on myself to realize that Jeff is perfect the way he is - whether he does it this way or that way. It doesn’t matter - it’s his heart. Jeff’s got a heart like nothing I’ve ever seen. And it's not just for me, but I just feel like he gets to expose it with me. Jeff: It's the honor of my life to be your man. I’m so proud of you and I couldn’t love you more. You’re my beautiful and nothing will ever change that.