Developing From a Negative

The Chosen One

In early 2013 I began writing a Phantom of the Opera fanfiction with a fellow phan (fan) online. We wanted to correct the plot points we disagreed with from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version of the story. Neither of us were out looking for a partner. As time passed and we learned more about each other, it turned out we have a concerning amount of interests in common and now I can’t figuratively or literally envision my life without her.

Over the last six years we’ve traveled to both coasts of this continent together, attended a plethora of concerts, discovered thrilling theatre, and continued to write stories that no longer involve a phantom. It hasn’t been perfect, and we’ve had our share of rough patches but there hasn’t been a day since we met that I haven’t fallen more in love with her. She is the light in my life and constantly pushes me to be a better person. My reality with her now is far better than any daydream I had as a child.

She is the only person I’ve successfully spent weeks on end with, without having periods of annoyance or alone time to recharge. I hear others talk about looking forward to vacations or weekends without their spouse and it makes me sad. I avoid things that keep her and I apart. If I can’t experience an event with her, my interest in that event plummets. I don’t understand why people stay with others who do not make them happy.

Despite this not being our song, Jim Croce says it better than I in “Time in a Bottle.”

“If I could save time in a bottle / The first thing I’d like to do / Is to save every day / ‘Til eternity passes away / Just to spend them with you.”

If it isn’t clear by now, Emily, I love you and I like you and now that fact is immortalized in print.