Not quite like Savage Garden

Stephanie's post yesterday talked about how she cried in a restaurant this weekend, and it reminded me of the time that I also cried in a restaurant, earlier this year. This is the most recent event that I've written about for the Tuesday Retrospective, but things are so different now that it certainly feels like a memory more than a current event, and that's the main criterion for this feature, so I'm going to write about it anyway.

Unlike that Savage Garden song, I didn't know that I loved Torsten before I met him, although we did meet online so there was a period of about a week and a half when we were emailing back and forth without having actually met each other. And during that period, both of us knew (or suspected) that we had found something exceptional, but were afraid to admit it since it seemed so crazy, which is why we met up in person as soon as possible.

Torsten knew that he loved me very soon in our relationship, but I was slower to be sure. I'm not sure if he had a moment when he knew that he loved me, but I did--one exact event that crystallized in my head the fact that I was in love with this man. It was the Sunday of the Oscars, which I think were in late February this year, which would mean that Torsten and I had been dating for about four and a half months. We had slept late and then gone for brunch at Bread & Chocolate, which used to be one of our favourite places until we decided to try to be healthy. I don't remember what we were eating but I do remember that we were in a booth toward the back of the restaurant. It was snowing, also.

My sister had planned an Oscars party for that night and I had told her that both Torsten and I would be there, but when we were eating brunch, Torsten was saying that he didn't really feel like going, with the bad weather and the fact that we'd be out so late and the work he had to do that day. I was really upset by this and said something to him about how much it bothered me that he never wanted to do things with my friends or go out and be social (okay, "never" might be an exaggeration, but I'm not known to play fair when I'm upset, and a little drama never hurt anyone, right? Not right? Oh).

Anyway, I was getting more and more upset and Torsten was getting confused, and trying to explain himself. And then he said to me something about how he wasn't sure when I invited him to go places with my friends if I really wanted him to come or was just inviting him out of some sense of obligation. This was such a strange concept to me that I stared at him and said something like, "Why would I ever want to be without you?" And then I burst into tears.

See, I told you I was dramatic. But damn it, it was right then, exactly then when I was sitting in the middle of Bread & Chocolate, crying in the face of my shocked boyfriend, that I knew I was in love with him. Although it was another couple of months before we actually said those words to each other.

It's amazing, now, to think that there was ever a time when I didn't know I loved him, or when he would be worried that I didn't really want him to come with me when I invited him somewhere. Because really, who wouldn't want this sweetheart to come with them everywhere they went?