I See Fire & My Man

So Ryne and I, after going to see The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, fell completely in love with Ed Sheeran's song "I See Fire" during the credits. After spending almost a week of planning and preparing, we got together, recorded me playing the song on a tattered old keyboard, and then spent a good few hours singing, editing, and cutting the song until it was perfect. Ryne, without a doubt, has an amazing talent where his voice is concerned. Even if we're just in his car singing along to Styx, I am constantly in awe of how absolutely wonderful he is.
He only has one other song posted on his SoundCloud, but go and check it out! I'm constantly trying to harass him into posting more, but he can never settle on a song he wants to sing, the goof. He is truly one of the greater blessings in my life. He actually is turning twenty this next Monday, the 28th. While I enjoyed us both being 19 together for the brief weeks that it lasted, I'm excited for him to enter an entirely different decade of life!

I first met Ryne in seventh grade. I had just moved back from South Africa, it was my very first time going to public school, and I was terrified. My school in South Africa had barely 100 kids, and that was from montessori (pre-school) all the way up to seniors. I was being thrown into a school where there were at least 300 kids in my grade. We didn't become friends or anything, he was just one of those kids who was in practically every single class I was in. We were both AP students, and that made the class numbers a lot smaller.

In fact, as we progressed into eighth grade, two of my really good friends were both crazy in love with him. One of them ended up dating him, and it ripped my two friends' friendship apart. As we moved on into high school, I actually came to dislike him. He hates it when I tell this story, but I think it's actually magical in how quickly someone's opinion can change. I didn't like him at all, honestly. In my junior year I almost despised him. To tell you the truth, I can't even remember why. I have this awful habit of judging people before getting to know them.

Fortunately, during senior year, I became good friends with Ryne's best friend. Then, in mid-March, the best friend invited Ryne to come to one of my social circle's events. I will not deny that I was annoyed. But things took quite an interesting turn. Ryne charmed me to no end. The quickest way to my heart is to be sweet to my friends, and Ryne was. I immediately extended the invitation for him to join us at our annual Spring Break party that weekend. He happily accepted. He actually recently told me that at the time he had been so happy to finally be a part of our circle, and it made me feel bad for excluding him for all this time.

This is all of us that night, for what we called "Family Dinner." Our whole crew was there. The quality is awful because it was next to impossible to find a way to fit everyone into the picture. We went to Olive Garden, and as per the tradition, everyone dressed up. As we were leaving, I stumbled slightly in my heels, and Ryne, starting a chain of events that would lead to me falling madly in love with him, stepped up and offered me his arm. He escorted me out of the restaurant and opened my car door before helping me inside.

The "family" went downtown and got gelato, which is where Ryne and I bonded over our love of everything geeky. We saw some Star Wars decals on the back of a car and freaked out together. We both realised we were crazy in love with Skyrim, good music, and making fun of other people. It all went downhill from there. He joined me in my obsession with Doctor Who, Sherlock, and Supernatural, and he introduced me to hunting, fishing, and his wonderfully loud and boisterous family.

 A month later, on April 14, he asked me to be his girlfriend whilst we were laying in the bed of his truck looking at the stars. Naturally, I said yes. As time went on, he found out that I am actually a psychopath, I like to stalk people, and I like to control everyone around me. But he still found it in his heart to love me. Which I can honestly say is a surprise. Even when I start freaking out because I can't exert my dominance over everyone I believe to be inferior to me (which, unsurprisingly, is almost everyone) and I deliberately harass people for fun, he still thinks I'm pretty cool.

It's hard when I'm kind of awful and he's so ridiculously perfect. But we manage. There are so many little quotes: "The couple who hunts together stays together" and "Couples who game together stay together." Ryne and I do all of the above, so I think that no matter how psycho I am, we'll always be pretty good.

The bottom line is that I absolutely love him. He is more than I ever could have asked for. And I look forward to several more years by his side. We'll still get mad together when our house gets raided on Rust, and he'll still let me decorate and name every horse we own in Minecraft. He'll continue to let me listen to my Sofia the First soundtrack, and I'll suffer through him making me watch the Tremors movies. But all in all, I would say that we are pretty perfect together. And I could never want anyone else but him.

"I have found the one whom my soul loves. I will hold him and will not let him go."

~Song of Solomon 3:4