I met Zach for the first time, twice. The first time I did not know him and he did not know me. I was 19 living in GSP 4E, taking a speed shower in the shared dorm bathrooms when disaster struck. The fire alarm in GSP went off about once a week, in no small part thanks to the recent advent of flavored vapes and Juuls the boys on 3E partook in regularly. White hot panic shot through me as I realized I had to either face staying in the building and getting fined (or maybe burning alive if this was a legitimate fire alarm) or going outside in November with wet hair. I chose the path of self-preservation and trudged into the biting November air in a hot pink waffle robe, slick shower shoes, and my hair in a towel. "Were you in the shower?" a boy and his friends giggle at me as I stand with my arms tightly crossed, lest a rogue wind gust take my last shred of dignity. I would find out years later one of the snickering boys was in fact my future husband. Zach lived a floor below me that entire semester, but it took two years and a trans-Atlantic flight for us to meet each other officially. Outside a Centra in Dublin, Ireland. During the Cold War America and Russia both decided the new frontier of warfare was weaponization of the human mind. For America this meant drugging people with LSD and trying to figure out if psychics were the real deal. Russia on the other hand was working on something much more straightforward, sleep deprivation as a form of torture. Thankfully, most of us will never experience Siberian gulag torture. However, if you have ever been jet lagged before you can imagine how effective it is. There is no amount of mental fortitude that can overcome jet lag. Trust me I have tried. And it was in this state, exhausted, and in the same clothes I had been wearing for 20 hours that I landed in Ireland in May of 2018. After dragging a 40 lbs. suitcase across gravel and acquainting myself with my equally as jet lagged roommates we all trudged out to a campus tour. "Oh hey these guys were at the airport with me..." A lot of people describe the moment they meet their future spouse as a moment where time slowed down. For me I would akin it to seeing someone you know across a sea of strangers at a party you don't want to be at. A strange sense of relief. "Oh finally, there you are." He and I became fast friends, bonding over video games, an affinity for pineapple pizza, and a secret love of bluegrass music. Along with a little posse of other Kansas-transplants we grew closer over the next three months, spending weeknights in Temple Bar district and schlepping across Europe to cheap AirBnBs in questionable neighborhoods on the weekends. That summer came to a close and like most college students, we fell back into our lives and routines. Graduated, got jobs, and moved to the opposite sides of the country: Las Vegas and Rhode Island. We were in the early months of the pandemic when we reconnected. I don't recommend starting a long distance relationship in the middle of a global pandemic. Still despite it all we slowly inched the long-distance, into middle-distance (VA), into 3-hour driving distance (NYC), into living together in 4 years. In 2020, Zach and I took our first of many road trips to Portland, Maine. We found a small community beach where a fishing shack and three benches looked out over Simonton Cove. We watched sail boats zip between islands and kids try and fail to catch fish year-after-year. Maine became a pilgrimage for us. Our jobs would change, our addresses would change, but Maine was always there. And its in that spot 4 years later that Zach asked me to marry him in August of 2024. You might be thinking at this point 'This end bit feels really condensed. Feels like you put a lot more energy into that top bit and kind of settled for the cliff notes here.' Well yeah 4,000 characters is actually not that much and I like the bit I wrote at the beginning. So take it up with Zola.