Welcome to the Misadventures of M & T

There are of course 3 sides to every story: His, Hers, and The Truth. Let's Start with the Truth- Tia and Malcolm were made for each other.

Well where to begin, I guess I can start at what I would call the actual beginning. So it was a friday, Sept 30th to be exact. I was with some of my boys going to a birthday party at this girl’s house that I had no idea who they were. When the door opened, this short, locs having girl opened the door and welcomed us with something to drink , of course lol. I knew it would be interesting when she offered dark, dark, or Groove Juice( if you know you know). After a night of fellowship with taboo and pizza, I realized that this girl seemed to be interested in me beyond friendship. So I decided to ask her to dinner the next day. Sidenote: This was big for me because not just a week or so earlier that I was pretty much done with dating as a whole due to recent experiences. So, we went on that date the next day after texting pretty much all day. It went well(obviously), and we have been on many misadventures since. Tia and I have gone through quite a bit in our 5 years and some change of being together. We have gone to the mountains, beaches, many homecomings, and different countries together. We are each other’s biggest headaches and also our favorite person. I am a firm believer, as my father has said, that if you work to be the person you are meant to be, the people who are meant to be around you will be put there by God for you. I full heartedly believe that is what brought me to my Stitch, Tia. She has seen just about every side of me, good and bad. I have gone from not knowing her at all to know everything I could want to know and more. I am beyond blessed to be able to have this moment with my favorite thug nugget, sour patch king, lola to my buggs, Tia.

Yes, this is as short as I was able to get it lol. But hey it's me! I believe things happen for a reason. Most of my life decisions have been driven by school/life goals with love & relationships not my priority, yet still a hopeless romantic. When I first ran into Buggs, I was still recovering from a rocky season when I first met Buggs. I was in a period of rediscovery, trying to enjoy a new chapter & just entered a PhD program. Clearly in our own worlds, we had both attended Watts Chapel for a whole year but never ran into each other. Meanwhile, we had mutual friends and had they all have hung out before. We finally met at our church anniversary 9/2016 in a quick interaction. I tell my friends I thought he was cute; this means to them find out if he is single. He is and I’m like uuummmm ok, lol. A couple of weeks later, I decided to throw a birthday party for a new friend. I like hosting things, so why not. Invited are all my new PhD peeps, Shaw Fam, Church Friends, some others and apparently Malcolm and his friend lol (eye roll). And they were the first to arrive and thinking it’s my birthday, Malcolm presents a “gift” (a bottle of wine). Interest piqued. Now I could go into super more detail but here are the things that really got my attention: 1) he notices my Swing Phi Swing S.F.I. key ring sign, telling me he knows what that is, when most people have no idea about my organization. 2) He liked my drink options Haha (brown, brown, or browner. He says, “A girl after my heart”), 3) He showed respectful interest. And apparently, I showed interest at some point by taking his hat & wearing it as well as yelling "Malcolm is on my team" playing Taboo. Toward the end of the night, he pulled me aside and said, “I would like to get to know you in a different setting, can I have your number please”. Like I said respectful and cute approach. We texted throughout the next day and invited me to join him for dinner at Olive Garden in Crossroads Cary -Our First Date. I like a guy who follows through. I learned his favorite color was blue & his favorite animal is a Wolf. My Auntie JoJo who passed earlier that year popped in my head- those were two of her favorite things- making me wonder if she sent him to me. We began “Courting”, his idea, right at the start of homecoming season. Needless to say, I wasn’t in a rush to introduce to bring him around. I wanted to enjoy the beginning. But with some encouragement, we attended multiple homecomings that year, with St. Aug’s being our first “public outing”. It's important to me that person can have some type of relationship with my friends/family. I used homecoming season kind of as a test, to see if wanted to disclose to him about my health status. It is hard to figure out the timing of that, but I didn’t want to get invested and then he couldn’t accept it. The test went well lol and I told him about a week later. He handled it well, listened, asked a couple of questions, and just needed to process, but still was interested 😊. By December, he officially asked me to be his girlfriend. Yes, we are that corny lol. I admit I ruin him officially asking me a little, I can’t help being observant and said, “it would be really cute you asked me where we had our first date” …... that was the plan, oops. We have been partners on an adventure ever since. Far from perfect, we are my own relationship goals. He is the first man that made me feel "Ready". Thank you for loving all of me. I love you 3000!