All About Us

Jenn

(TLDR AT THE END)

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The story of me and Tim is a hard one to tell. I met Tim in 2001 my freshman year in high school. He was introduced to me by a friend named, and I kid you not, Batman. When our friend Batman introduced him, he did so as The French Kid. Which is the only name I knew him as for the first six months of our friendship.  

Over the next several weeks, as I got to know to him, I got to like him. He was funny, and smart, and just so weird. He walked around with a copy of the script to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When I told him I'd never seen it, he promptly loaned me the VHS copy he had so I could see it. 

I think we spent more time in our high school careers quoting that movie to each other in our group than we did any actual talking to one another. 

Sometime around my sophomore, his junior year I decided I was going to ask him out. I loved his goofiness and felt like I needed to take my chance. We had a dance a few days later and that felt like my chance. A group of us went together and when a slow song came on, I asked him to dance. This was my chance. Just me and him, moving with the music, (in that awkward shuffle of high school dancing). I looked up at him, said his name . . . and chocked. 

He looked at me with his big hazel eyes and I couldn't do it. 

Why would he want me?

I was so much bigger than he was. 

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See I've had a weight issue since about the time puberty struck. By that time my previously fast metabolism had enabled me to develop some really bad eating habits. But I was active and never seemed to gain any weight. What did I have to worry about? 

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A lot it turns out. 

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Tim started dating someone else and continued to date her until after he had graduated. 

The next year I graduated and within six months of being out of school and into the workforce I was ready to move out of my mother's house and live more independently. 

It was around this time that Tim came back into my life. 

I was working at Walmart and one night as I was coming out of work and there he was again. Hanging out with some friends. we spent the next several hours talking and hanging out with some other people from high school. By the end of the night I had asked if he needed a roommate, and, even though it was a one bedroom apartment and I was looking at living on a futon, he agreed and we set our plan in motion.

I can’t recall the exact date I moved in with him, only that he showed up in his green truck and helped me move everything I was taking with me. Which wasn’t much.

This was my time.

We started spending almost all of our time together, hanging out at home or with our mutual friends. We camped, we went on late night drives, and every day I felt like I loved him just a little more.

As the days rolled by I went to my friend Mary to help me say something to him.

There was a night, he’d just gotten home from work and I had the day off, so we were hanging out at home watching a movie and I thought, “Now! Do it now!”

So I crawled across my futon to the large recliner he was seated in and plucked the bottle of Smirnoff Ice out of lap and took a big drink. When I looked at him, planning what I would say, he looked at me with both confusion and something that I had interpreted to be mild disgust. I immediately backed away. Settling myself back on the couch with a pain in my chest that had me using all the strength and will power I possessed to keep from crying.

Yes, I know that’s dramatic. In my defense I was 19.

By Halloween Tim had a girlfriend and I started trying to date the first person I thought would have me. Turns out that particular guy only wanted my V-Card. And when I shook like a leaf and told him no during his first real attempt to get it, he wanted nothing else to do with me.

Things between Tim and his girl hadn’t gone well, and the thought of trying again with him crossed my mind almost every day. But whenever I had that thought, the face he had made at me burned behind my eyes I couldn’t do it. Better to have him as a friend, to keep him in my life any way I could, than to risk losing him by saying something.

Another boy came along, one who was worse, in many, many ways. But he said he cared for me, said he wanted me, and I believed him. Up until he started to show his true colors. But by that point I was so deep into things with him I couldn’t escape, even though I tried.

Not to long after that the girl Tim was sleeping with became pregnant and I knew then what he would do. I know he would be with her, would marry her and that any chance I had was gone. I celebrated the news of his son, and the eventual wedding that followed.

After that the man I was with pulled me down deep and secluded me from the people I knew and cared about, isolating me.

Years went by and I finally managed to get back into a semblance of contact. Nothing like what we were before, but he was a father of three young boys now, his time was not his own. I was seeing the man who would one day become my husband and our lives were just different.

Not to long after I was married, we learned that I have a condition called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. It’s a complicated condition that had made having children an impossibility. It fractured my marriage, which was already on shaky ground, and our relationship never recovered. We tried, for a long, long time, we tried to keep it together, using our love as a kind of glue to keep us from falling apart.

Three years, and a move to Utah later, it was finally time to call it.

I love that man still, and want nothing but the best for him as he moves forward with his life.

I spent the next three years after that trying to figure out who I was now that I knew I wouldn’t be able to be a mother. Which was the single most devastating thing I have ever had to come to terms with. There would be times where I would see something that talked about the joys of parenting or how great grandkids are, and I would die a little inside.

The holidays were the worst. I would toss myself into helping with my sisters or my roommates’ kids, anything to fill the time and emptiness that was swallowing me whole. But it was only every temporary. Sometime during those first three years alone I figured I would spend the rest of my life alone. Which was okay. I was going to have a homestead.

And dogs.

So many dogs.

I just needed to get out of debt and find a nice plot of land somewhere far away from big cities where I would homestead, prep, and raise a menagerie of dogs to help me fill the days.

Before the divorce, and the move, my husband and I had gone with another couple Tim’s house. While there he had shown me his aquaponics, which I loved, and his huge garden, and chickens, and ducks. He was starting his homestead while still living in an urban environment. Which I had wanted to do, but my husband did not. He had allowed me a dog, and even that had been a fight lasting for days.

So I started to message him about questions I had about bees, geothermal heating, companion planting, chickens, ducks, aquaponics, you name it. He would be super responsive for a while, but then his hectic life would pull him away from the phone and I wouldn’t hear from him for a while again.

Summer of 2020, I was out of work, thanks to Covid-19 and looking to spend some time with my mother and sister in Missouri. A trip was planned for late October and I informed Tim, hoping I would be able to see my old friend, who I also happened to greatly enjoy looking at.

The first night I came over we were going to watch the meteor shower outside on the trampoline. The boys, his three sons, were so excited to see someone since California had been locked down for almost eight months since then. We all sat out on the trampoline and the boys asked if they could show me their chickens. And I was like “Of course!”

The next moment they were rushing back up on the trampoline with chickens and geese telling me the names and breeds of each bird and what their purpose was in their little farm. We were so excited talking about the birds, we didn’t think about the poop.

The goose alone pooped so much we all had to seek shelter in the house, leaving the trampoline until it could be cleaned in the daylight. Tim sent the boys to bed and we sat on couch talking for hours. Only after he realized the time, and he had to be up at like 4:30am did we say goodnight to each other and give each other a hug.

I had such a good time with them I couldn’t wait to go back. So, the very next night I grabbed a huge pizza from this place in Hemet called Antonio’s, (amazing pizza by the way), and headed back over. We started watching the Haunting of Bly Manor together, and the next time I came we did pumpkins, and then more pizza.

I was hard not to imagine myself being able to spend the rest of my days that way. In blissful domesticity with Tim and his three sons. Wanting to spend as much time with them as I could, I pushed my trip out to the morning of the 1st of November and began to plan a Halloween for the boys at my moms house.

A few nights before the 31st I told Tim if he had time to call me so I could talk to him about my plans. And we did, but we also spent the better part of three hours talking about homesteading, our plans and dreams for it and we even had a conversation about Christmas trees.

See, I have always loved the idea of getting live tree, with the root ball intact so that after Christmas it can be planted and continue living. I’d gotten this idea about having noting but live trees and then planting them in a row at my homestead almost like a privacy wall, but of past Christmas trees.

Turns out, Tim had the same idea.

This was a thought that had gotten me no small amount of ridicule from people. Not just because of tree farming but because of how much more environmentally conscience it is to use a plastic tree instead. But Tim understood.

Hell, he wanted the same thing.

I felt something in me threaten to break at that.

He was perfect.

So damn perfect.

Every conversation we had, the things we wanted to learn how to make and do, our homestead plans, they were all so perfectly in line it just didn’t seem fair.

Tim is smart, attractive, funny, nerdy, and passionate about his family and the things he wants. He’s hard working, athletic, and amazing cook and about sixty pounds lighter than I am. I was too heavy. And I knew it. I had never been his type and as much as it shames me to admit it, I still thought about that face he made the night I took a drink of his beer.

The day before my sister left the our step siblings and their spouses came over to see her and my niece and Tim was set to come by that afternoon so we could take the kids ghost hunting. I had to run my sister into town really quick and by the time we got back, Tim and the boys were running lose all over my moms three acres.

They bonded with my niece so fast and became instant best friends, and my mom and step-dad were incredibly grateful for the distraction for Hayden as she’d been a bit lonely with only adults for company. They ended up staying well into the evening and Tim and I busied ourselves by walking around my moms property spit balling about what we would do similar on our homestead and what we would do differently.

When it was time to go we drove through and got the boys dinner and did some light ghost hunting, and then Tim took me home and the boys passed out on the drive. I made a comment to Tim about my mom thinking there was something going on and when he said nothing I awkwardly filled the silence with comments about how silly it was to think that after all our years of friendship.

Halloween was a huge success, with the boys coming up in costume and doing a scavenger hunt where the cluse were all written in verse. Because I hate myself of course.

What was supposed to be a quick afternoon thing became and all day one with them staying through lunch and into dinner. I took selfies that night with the boys in their costumes and they are some of my favorite pictures of us to this day. Then we pilled into the truck and drove to a familiar neighborhood to see if anyone was doing Halloween.

By the end of the night, the boys had made out like bandits with a bag switch halfway through the housing tract. Before we  had even gotten back onto the 74, the boys were out.

Knowing this was the last time I would see Tim for a while, I gave him a long hard hung. Wishing I was thin enough or confident enough to tell him how I felt. Instead I held him for as long as I could and then said my goodbyes.

He pulled away and out the gate as I slipped into my car and tried to start the engine.

It was dead.

This battery that I had less that a year was dead.

I tried to wave Tim down but he was gone.

I called my mom  her drover her car down the drive but had the devil of a time trying to figure out how to jump it because of how the car was parked by the trees. Fearing the worst, I called Tim and asked if he had long cords. He did and said he would be right up, just needed to put the boys to bed.

Mom, not to be deterred, droved over the bumpy hilly property until she could get close enough to jump the car, in her Yaris. She jumped it, helped me get it back up to where the house was, and together we made a plan to get a new battery in the morning since we didn’t trust mine to make it all the way back to Utah.

Before I could call Tim to tell him we had it, my phone rang, power was out at the house in Utah and did we pay our bill? My roommate was full of questions which I hastened to answer but not quick enough.

Tim pulled up, heard about the jump and took a look at the car, testing the battery and informing me that the charge was low, and not holding.

We ended up talking for a while about the car, the odds of it and how everytime we try to separate from each other, something terrible happens to us, from our exes to the car, to a number of things. It really looked like fate was trying to keep us together.

After a while we watched the meteors streak past the full blue moon. When my neck began to complain, I grabbed a blanket from the trailer I was sleeping in and laid it on the deck. We laid, side by side, freezing in the cold November air, talking in equal parts about space and the land we wanted and how we would manage it together.

I flicked my arm up several times, trying to bring it down just right to catch his hand. When finally managed to land it, he grabbed my fingers and held on. When neither of us moved to break the connection, he shifted over and laced out fingers together.

It was amazing. This thing I had thought about and wanted for so long, it was actually happening.

After a little longer that way, Tim informed me that he had to get home, he didn’t like leaving the boys alone to long. So, we got up and I walked him to his truck wrapping the blanket around me as I went. When I commented on the warmth of the blanket Tim said it must be nice so I gave him a hug, wrapping my arms and blankie around him.

As we pulled away, he shifted at the last moment and kissed me.

I would love to tell you that I was ready for the kiss and it was this epically romantic moment, but that would be a lie.

I think because I had spent the last two decades or so imagining what it would be like to kiss Tim, how I would feel, where it would happen, or when, I got so up in my head about it I froze.

Like a stature of ice.

In my mind I was screaming “OH MY GOD, OHMYGOD, OHMYGOD, Tim Klink is kissing me.

Unfortunately, Tim couldn’t hear what was going on in my head. All he knew is that he made a move on his friend of twenty years and when he kissed her, she didn’t kiss him back.

He all but jumped away from me and into his truck, said bye, and sped down my mom’s driveway. Leaving me standing in the moonlight wondering what I had done wrong.

I found out later that Tim had worried I didn’t feel the same. We have so few friends from high school we still speak to, he worried he’d just lost one by taking a chance on a kiss.

We laugh about it now, my freezing, his running.

I went and saw him the next night and we were just in a relationship. It didn’t matter that it was one kiss and that neither one of us had said anything official or asked any questions, we just were.

It was then we noticed how similar we really were. All the dreams we had, the little weird Idiosyncrasy's we each had fit perfectly with the others. With one exception.

“We’re both doers,” Tim declared one night as I was making dinner and he stood awkwardly around the kitchen. “We’re both used to be the one who does everything.”

We’ve had to learn how to ask for help, and how to accept it when it’s offered, no easy thing.

Now we’re planning our wedding for June of 2022, and getting ready to start implementing some of our ideas into the garden we have here in the city, sort of a dry run for when we finally get property. We’re getting the kids used to being in school again, and the idea of our new family.

It’s a crazy thing, to know that you met your soul mate, your other half twenty years ago in high school and it took you two decades to realize it because you’re too afraid, because your opinion of yourself is low that never made your move.

MORAL: If you learn nothing else from our story, nothing else from our Homestead of Misfits, learn this: Take the shot. Ask that nerdy boy or girl or non-binary gender person out. You never know, they could legitimately be your soul mate.

TLDR: I met the love of my life in highschool and took twenty years to say anything because I was afraid. Now we’re getting married and starting a homestead. Welcome to the Misfit Homestead.