My Side.

"What's your favorite animal? What do you do for fun? What's your favorite song?" - some random girl at work asks.

Great, I thought. A weird coworker actually wants me to be social.

Good luck with that.

I answered her silly questions and didn't think much of it. I don't like people, people don't like me, it's a great relationship I have with the world.

But then something happened.

A few days later, there was a drawing of all my favorite things thrown together waiting for me in the break room. I can't remember it exactly, but I think there was a ukulele-playing sea turtle sitting in a lime tree.

And with that, Whitney made her grand entrance into my life.

A girl that's weird enough to make a drawing like that is weird enough for me to keep around.

I didn't have any expectations at first. She was a cool girl that I worked with. Period. End of story. We didn't talk outside of work, we didn't hang out, we didn't do anything. Our relationship was strictly at work.  She was leaving for Florida in a few months and I'd never see her again. 

But she's a smart girl and knew how to get to my heart.

You see, I've been growing my hair out for the last year and she just "happened" to have the deep conditioner that I had been needing. See embarrassing picture. ---->

(I'm 90% sure she bought it once she found out I needed it.)

So one night, she invited me over and after deep conditioning my hair, we ended up going to somewhere special, somewhere that both of us had wanted to go for so long but had never had the chance to get there.

A place called Happiness.

We walked across the street to the park, I put the blanket down (because she really struggles with that) and we just laid there together- looking up at the stars and listening to music and old people playing pickleball and it was as romantic as it could be with the sweaty elderly playing within earshot.

Whitney and I have amazing conversations, that is something I've really come to love about her.  The way she uses words is more art than it is speaking.  We can have deep and intellectual conversations about life and love and exes and pain and heartbreak and then we can talk about our favorite 90's bands. So as we started talking, I fell into a trance, kind of like I was hypnotized by this girl. She absolutely drew me in and commanded my attention. I could not look away, I could not stop hearing her voice, I could not stop laughing with her.  At one point, I started to feel weird in my stomach, like I drank a ton of Mountain Dew that day. But then I remembered I had and brushed it off. Strangely, though, the more we talked, the stronger these feelings got. I had trained myself to fight off these feelings but with her, it was impossible. the unstoppable force that was her charm and beauty had hit an immovable object that was my cold heart.

As it turns out, she's much more stubborn than I am. 

My heart started beating faster and louder and I couldn't stop looking at her lips and her beautiful face in the moonlight and then we kissed.

and kissed.

and kissed.

(etc.)

((lots of kissing.))

Something inside of us changed that night. We knew there was a time limit on how long we would have together, and up to that point, it had held us back. But after that magical night at the park, we didn't care anymore. We knew that her trip to Disneyworld wasn't going to be the end of us, it was just a short pause in our movie.

As Noah Calhoun says in the greatest love story of all time- "So it's not gonna be easy. It's gonna be really hard. We're gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, for ever, you and me, every day."

So here we are, staring straight into the eyes of Death-by-Disney and holding on for dear life. Long distance is something I promised myself I would never do again but this is something beautiful and scary and I'd be a fool not to take this chance because this girl is gorgeous and nice and genuine and loves peach sweet tea and I swear she's the coolest girl I've ever met. (She'll even tell you that to make sure you don't forget.) Earlier tonight, I said, "I don't know what to write about." Her response was, "Write whatever you want. like about how awesome I am and stuff. "

So, yeah.

That's Whitney, I'm Skyler, and this is our 127 Days.

Our Story

Back in February I made a decision to accept an internship to work in Disneyworld this fall. I was a single girl with nothing to hold me back, and it sounded so fun to get out of Saint George for a semester. I was ready to run away from all the reminders of past mistakes and 110 degree days. I was set on leaving and never coming back. But then something unthinkable happened.Then I did something SO stupid. Something I swore I'd never do again.  
I fell in love.  

I met Skyler at work one day in the break room. He was in training with some kid I knew from school and for some reason I talked to him and was friendly. (Very out of character for me, don't ya think?) I kept talking to him on the IM at work and eventually we started hanging out. I went into the whole thing thinking, "I'm going to Florida at the end of the summer. It's nothing. I don't want a relationship right now. We're just friends. etc." Well, I deep conditioned his hair one night and we ended up kissing. Then we just sort of made a habit out of kissing each other until he decided that he wasn't going to "kiss so many girls this summer." He just wanted to kiss me. On June 4th he made me his girlfriend. I've been the happiest person in the world ever since.

This summer has been the most magical and amazing summer anyone could have imagined. Skyler has completely changed the way I look at life and honey mustard and I'm so in love with him. It's perfect. I mean, it was perfect. Until yesterday.

We knew from the very beginning that I was leaving at the end of the summer and we talked so many times about what that meant for our relationship, but it didn't ever seem like a real thing. But it is. Yesterday I loaded up my little car and drove to Salt Lake after saying goodbye to Sky and our puppy for four months. Come Monday I'll be 3,000 miles away from them. Scary huh?  But I read a quote once and it said:

"Distance is not for the fearful. It is for the bold. It is for those who are willing to spend a lot of time alone in exchange for a little time with the one they love. It is for those who know a good thing when they see it, even if they don't see it nearly enough."

So here is to hoping we are bold enough to handle this. Here is to the days we are going to laugh and cry and cry some more and then laugh because we are crying in public again. I'm going to miss him. I already miss him. But I know we'll be just fine.
We are writing this blog to share our journey with you. To help people believe in magic and believe in love. Whoever may read this. (Hi mom.) I can't wait for you to read the posts Skyler will write because every word that comes out of that boy's mouth inspires me. He's so loving and supportive and I'm such a jerk for leaving him for this long, but these 127 days are going to fly by. And then who knows what adventures we will go on after that.

xoxo. Whitney.