I don’t really have anyone to share our story with so I thought I would share here.

I met my wife over a decade ago online while playing Call of Duty. We spoke for months online until we decided to meet. This was 2011 when online dating and meetups like this were still considered a little sketchy, no Tinder or mainstream hookup culture yet so we were extremely nervous. We were both in our early 20s and I personally have never been brave in my life except for this. For all I knew, I was going directly to a serial killer’s house.

When we met in person in Illinois I stayed the week with her and her family. She looked so nervous and cute the second I saw her. She thought I looked goofy but we instantly clicked and enjoyed our time together. Everything started cordial and nice. Everyone was friendly to me but I knew her family and saw through everything from the start. Her family were very abusive and all around narcissistic toxic people who blamed her for everything ever since childhood. They fired a therapist before because the therapist had the nerve to call them out on it.

The night I was set to leave, some major drama unfolded when I was packing my things and it got really hostile, really fast. Her mother was hitting her, her brother was calling her the most disgusting things, and her dad really didn’t step in at all except for when his son told him I said something (I didn’t) and the guy wanted to beat the life out of me in his garage. I’m some skinny gamer kid, last thing I wanted to do was get the shit kicked out of me by some Marine for no reason.

I literally thought of it for 3 seconds before I told her to come home with me. I was still 20 and she was 21, we had no idea what either of us were getting ourselves into. She grabbed as much of her things as she could fit in her bags all while being verbally and physically assaulted. It was like they waited for this moment to unleash on her and finally put their “problem” on me.

We left their house in Illinois, she never said goodbye to her dad and never saw him again. We got in a cab, I had my ticket home but she didn’t so my stepmom bought her one and we made our way to Chicago’s Greyhound station. Our bus wasn’t til 7:15am and it was like 9pm so the cab driver took us on a tour of Downtown Chicago. I remember apologizing to the driver for not having a lot of money for a tip. I gave him a few dollars in dimes and nickels as that was almost all of my money left. Eventually we ended up at the station and waited. They wanted to weigh our luggage and her stuff was overweight in one bag but not the other so we started moving stuff from one bag to the other when we found a bunch of dog shit in the bag that her brother must have tossed in.

We figure everything out and the bag weights worked out. I remember buying a small order of fries and sharing them with her. We get on the bus with the smelliest crust punks on Earth and it was no good. We sucked it up and we were on our way. Last thing I remember was falling asleep on her boob while watching downtown Chicago disappear in the distance.

We woke up at a stop in Indiana and got out to use the bathroom. There was a Burger King there and she was starving so I got some change together and bought her a burger and a small orange soda. I remember the cashier asked me if I wanted anything and I said “I’m ok” but I guess she saw how in bad shape we were because we looked beat up and I was paying in change so she gave me a free cup of orange soda as well.

We get on the bus and wake up in Cleveland and we’re waiting for our next bus to finish the trip. I spent the last of my change on Grandma’s Peanut Butter cookies in the vending machine. I had one and gave the other to her. To this day I’ll buy those cookies and I’ll still give her the other one.

We make it to my hometown, Buffalo, and my dad shows up in his beaten down car. He takes us home where everyone is excited to meet my girlfriend. My dad goes out and gets us a pizza from my workplace and it was the tastiest thing after a day of surviving off of junk food and a small soda.

We’ve been inseparable ever since. I have a big surgery coming up soon and it’ll be the first time in 11 years that we’ve been apart. There is not one single person in the world that I trust more.

Anyways, I know this was long but I was thinking about it and I thought I would share if anyone cared to read it. Thanks!