Melissa and Chris

I met the love of my life on November 21, 2004.

I was in Tokyo attending a year-long Japanese Language and Culture program. My friend and classmate, Bahiyyih, invited me to Ueno Zoo one weekend with her and a friend she had made at her dorm. Little did I know, my life was about to change forever.

I saw Melissa for the first time outside the zoo entrance. She was beautiful. Absolutely, stunningly beautiful - and that was just my first impression. As the day went on I realized more and more how amazing she really was. She was intelligent, had a wonderful sense of humor, was extremely easy to talk to, and was just incredibly fun to be around. Melissa and I spent much of our time at the zoo talking together, and before the time came to leave I knew I wanted to see her again.

After the zoo, we all grabbed some pizza and Beard Papa cream puffs, then boarded the train to home. Before we all split up for the night, Melissa let us know she was making a detour to Shibuya to teach an English lesson for an hour and would be available to hang out afterward. Bahiyyih was ready to go home, but I wasn't. My stop was an hour away in the opposite direction, but I said I had business in Shibuya too. A complete lie, but I won't apologize for that!

Her student wasn't there when we arrived. We waited for a short while but when he didn't show up we bailed and found our way to a smaller, quieter coffee shop to continue our conversation. I don't remember much about what we talked about that night, but I do remember talking about the things she wanted to see or do before she left Japan. The next morning, I got her email address from Bahiyyih and sent her an itinerary. Over the next month the three of us tried crossing off each item on the list, and had a lot of great times together.

I missed her when she left, but we had established a good friendship. I spent the next year talking with her online and on the phone, and figured we would never see each other again. Even though at the time I was still in Japan, when I eventually came home I would be in Oregon, and she would be a world away in Chicago.

Melissa and I kept in touch over the next year, developing our friendship with endless conversations about anything and everything for hours and often late into the night. I'd wait for her to get online after school, or skip club meetings to take her calls. Like before, I couldn't get enough of her, and it wasn't long before I considered her my closest friend. We often talked about how much we missed Japan, which often felt more like a home to us than America had. When Melissa found a deal on cheap flights back neither of us hesitated.

We arrived in early December and stayed for three weeks, starting in Tokyo for a week before heading east to Kyoto. Along the way we stayed on a lake next to Mt. Fuji, a ryokan in Nikko and a secluded mountain onsen. Everything we saw, everything we did, confirmed to us both just how much we loved this country. And for me, every moment I spent with Melissa confirmed just how much I loved her.

I told her how I felt while we were in Nikko, a week into our trip. From then on the trip took on a different tone as we started to explore what that meant for us. We had an amazing two weeks, but afterward reality reared its head again, and the distance became our downfall. Melissa decided we were better off as friends, and I was devastated.

Over the next six years Melissa and I were stuck in a cycle of communication and silence. At some point Melissa would miss our friendship and reach out. Catching up turned into conversations that ran long into the night. One phone call in particular lasted over 24 hours, to my roommate's annoyance! We'd become close friends, but at some point I'd realize I had fallen for her again and wanted more than she could give. Eventually I'd end communication in an attempt to avoid getting hurt.

One of these cycles began as we were both preparing for our own separate adventures. Melissa was leaving for the United Arab Emirates to teach in their public school system, while I was backpacking in Southeast Asia. Despite the extreme timezone difference and limited internet cafe hours, we bonded over our travel adventures. True to our cycle we quickly became close friends, and like all cycles before, my feelings for her started to return. This became obvious the first time we Skyped each other - the first time we had spoken face to face, so to speak, since we were last together in Japan. When she appeared on the screen I was hit with a tidal wave of emotions. The love I had for her before, and everything that always led me there, was in front of me again. She asked me if I was alright. I was just staring at her; I couldn't process it all at once.

Back in 2005, after Melissa left Japan for home, Bahiyyih and I had gone on a trip to Thailand. She had always been jealous of that trip, and now there I was in Thailand again with her only a 'few' hours away. It seemed like a great place to reconnect in person. We planned for her to visit during her fall holiday in a month, but when she realized I was just bumming around Thailand she invited me to check out the Middle East. Not long after arriving I could see that her job was taking a massive toll on her. Every day she arrived home exhausted and in a daze, unable to speak. Eventually I suggested that instead of leaving on holiday, she might quit her job instead. As much as she loved her new home, she realized things couldn't continue as they were. After several of her attempts to rectify the situation were dismissed, she agreed. She sold everything and joined me on my Southeast Asia backpacking adventure.

We started dating shortly after the trip began, and I couldn't believe it. After all this time we were officially a couple, and in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Then, to make things even better, three months later she got a job teaching at an international school in Tokyo. We were moving back to Japan!

She had a job, but I didn't - there aren't many jobs available for foreigners. The best I could find was a short-term job teaching English. As time went on and our day-to-day life became routine, we began to have issues that we were unable to overcome. We broke up and I left Japan. A few months after coming home, I was in a serious motorcycle accident that left me with 2 broken arms and a shattered wrist. If anything, it gave me time to think, and I eventually decided that in order to fully heal, I had to end the cycle and move on.

Things were different after we broke up. For starters, we didn't fall back into our typical cycle. Even though we never stopped talking to each other, contact was sporadic and short. Neither of us wanted to recreate another painful situation. Three years passed, and one day in 2015 Melissa reached out again. We may not have worked as a couple, but we were always amazing friends, and she wanted to know if I was willing to rekindle that friendship. I wasn't sure if I was ready for it, but I thought things might be different if we at least took things slowly. So that's what we did. We stuck to email at first. A few years later we started texting, and a year after that talked on the phone for the first time. A few months later we agreed to see each other again for a visit. For the first time in nearly six years I'd finally see Melissa.

She came to Oregon in July 2018 and we spent a week exploring Portland and the surrounding areas. We went to the zoo, explored the gorge, sat on the beach, and soaked in a mountain hotspring. That week was amazing, it could hardly have been more perfect, but without a doubt the best part of it all was the person I was with. We were definitely friends again, but that week together reminded me why I so often wanted more, why I had fallen for her over and over again.

I knew I was going to miss her when she left, but I was completely unprepared for how much. The day after she went home the local Asian market had a Japanese summer festival. It was a great festival, but at the same time, unbearable; everything reminded me of her. She was missing me too, more than I realized at the time. I half-jokingly suggested she come back, and was shocked when she agreed. Three days later she was back in Oregon.

We spent the next week exploring our feelings and what, if anything, that meant for us. It was clear I was falling for her again, that was undeniable - and if I'm honest with myself, predictable. This time however, she was also falling for me. She decided that since I had been the one to make all the moves toward a relationship in the past, this time it had to fall to her. The night she got home from her second trip, without even checking with me, she got tickets for her third. It was during that third time together that Melissa asked me if I would consider a relationship, and on September 3rd, 2018 we officially began dating.

We've known each other for almost 15 years at this point. We've been close friends, tried dating, and traveled the world together. Now finally, after all this time, we were both in love. We knew that in order to make the relationship work, we had to fully pursue it, and that meant getting rid of the last thing standing in our way: the 3,000 miles between Portland and Chicago. We made plans for Melissa to move in, and at the end of October I flew to Chicago and the two of us (plus two cats) drove to Oregon.

The next few months were extremely busy as we traveled for the holidays and settled into our new home and life together. It was fun, it was stressful, it was exciting and it was tiring. Most of all, though, it was unbelievable. This is the woman I've fallen for time and time again. The woman I've traveled across the world to see. The woman I couldn't stop thinking of even when we weren't in contact. It was unbelievable that after all this time and everything we've been through we were finally together.

It was always her. She was always the one.

I proposed on her birthday, March 22nd. That's also the start of the Portland cherry blossom season so I was planning a surprise hanami, a type of picnic in Japan that's done under the blossoming cherry trees. Melissa has always loved that time of year. In Japan, she celebrated by visiting cherry blossom festivals and drinking all the sakura Starbucks. Back home in a place without cherry blossoms, she held a yearly Sakura Matsuri in her classroom. When we decided to customize Melissa's engagement ring, we settled on creating two hidden cherry blossoms to honor our meeting and living in Japan, and to remind ourselves to slow down and cherish each other, as cherry blossoms symbolize the beauty and transience of life. I knew that she would be thrilled to see the sakura bloom again.

I spent months researching the weather, blossom forecasts, and ideal locations. I contacted the local Japanese community and park groundskeepers. I consulted Japanese language experts and native speakers to help with the ring inscription, 友&愛, which means "Love and Friendship" and sounds like You (yuu) and I (ai). Despite all my planning, as the date got closer I realized it wasn't going to work - it was expected to rain and the blossoms were coming too late.

I pushed the proposal back a week thinking the situation would improve by then. Better weather, more blossoms. That didn't feel right though, so at the very last minute, I left work early and took her to the Portland Japanese Garden, one of our favorite spots in Portland. We had lunch at the cafe, talking about the past and our future, and then explored the gardens. I was nervous the whole time, as I went into this without a plan, but when we entered the rock garden everything felt right. I handed her an antique ring box decorated with cherry blossoms as a 'birthday present'. When she opened it and saw the ring, before she could react I went down on my knee. I have no idea what I said. She doesn't remember, either. All that matters is how it ended. She said yes.

I love you Melissa. I always have, and I always will.