Paul's Story

This is hard to put into words for me. My story is of course longer than just 10 years (or so); so let me a'bridge it for you (that's a patented apaulstrophe so it is in fact gramatically correct).

Katie. Yeah.

We met many years ago, at her parent's; we made great friends. Actually she said "You're my favorite person", as I recall, after having read a beer bottle cap that said "All" as "Aii". Our lives would weave back and forth, leaving us to experience life and find our own joys, our own sorrows and solutions, our own meanings. Of course we would cross paths, with the whole soulmate thing, we would meet up and enjoy each other's company as friends.

A time came when we actually had a chance to talk, just me and her. It was incredible, obviously we had a direct line to each other's humour, and the conversation was wonderful. It came that we would talk more often, and soon we were "Good Friends". Okay, very soon since we already were.

I was of course already certain of that. But when I learned about her upcoming surgery, the pieces fell together; she was in a tough time and here we were chatting away, not a single sign of trouble. That, among so many other signs, showed me a strength of character is deserving of an incredible amount of respect. To me, respect is just part of the love I wanted to show the person I would marry; not my thought at the time, but I was impressed not only by this, but by her honesty and willingness to confront life. It was about two months later that I told her I wanted to marry her.

Two months later was about one month after our first official date. She had begun to recover, I had brought her soup, and we had had many more wonderful conversations. I was completely in love by then; What else besides yes could I have said when she started telling me about the trip of a lifetime. We started training.

When we got to the top, I was completely stripped down to my most basic elements. In my mind, there was only one foot, the other one that gets put in front of the first foot, breathing, and Katie. It was all of a sudden clear to me that I really did think of Katie as a part of me; Asking her to marry me was the most obvious thing in my mind to do.