One year

One year ago today, I was counting down the minutes to drinks with a boy. We'd met at a party a couple of months before, and then again outside the museum, where we'd agreed to go for a drink in the near future.

I was at that horrible 'outwardly fine but really not at all over one very long relationship and a couple of flirtations' stage, and truth be told, I wasn't even sure it was a date. But I liked him, and he interested me, so off we went. Drinks turned into dinner and amazing hugs goodbye, followed some days later by cake, cricket watching and first kisses at Earls Court tube.

And still I dragged my feet, didn't take it seriously. I didn't want to be the girl who rushed headlong from one major relationship to the next. I spent months being unbelievably happy when I was with him, and plagued by doubt as soon as I was alone.

Unusually for me, I talked to him about these feelings. How he handled those conversations made me look at him again. So incredibly grounded, and honest, and... sane. Some of it can't have been easy to hear, and at no point would I have blamed him if he'd said "OK, enough of you, crazy wench. Shoo". But he didn't. More than once, he said "you are not going to screw this up, because I won't let you".

Finally, at some point in mid-January, I realised I was taking my relationship with him seriously. First of all, I was in relationship with him. I wasn't giddy, but I had a quiet certainty about him. He was what I wanted. I wasn't "in love", at least not how I always experienced it before, with anxiety and wanting to be perfect for him so that he'd never leave (yeah, I've got me some issues...). I just loved him, and how he made me feel about myself.

I'm not quite sure what happened after that. Within a fortnight, we'd said "I love you", I'd been taken home to meet his folks, and we were really quite serious about each other. Four months after that, I'd moved me, my cat and my books to his house.

Tonight, he'll cycle back from work to our home, and we'll have dinner together. Bangers and mash with wine, my favourite meal, and the first he ever cooked for me. And I'll tell him just how glad I am that those drinks were a date.