Well then, better get my typing fingers on!

I met Tatyana during a Friday night football game in marching band last year through my best friend Russell. We were all standing behind the end zone stands during the fourth quarter. I, as usual, was eating leftover pizza that I brought to the game with me, and we were hanging out and having fun during an otherwise unpleasant rainy Ohio night. I thought she was really cute. The next day, I received a friend request. I didn't recognize the name [I didn't ask her what her name was the night before] and I actually mistook her for someone else at first, so I left it in friend request purgatory. After another week and another football game and another bag of leftover pizza hanging out during the fourth quarter, she messaged me afterward, and that's when I recognized her and accepted. Over the next month and a half, we started talking a lot and hanging out whenever we could during school, not just the Friday night football games with shared pizza. Our personalities matched perfectly - she completely understood my sense of humor and found it to be hilarious, I thought her playful personality was absolutely adorable. We talked for hours on end - our longest chat was when she was babysitting and we ended up talking from 7 PM to 2 AM - 7 hours. I wasn't sure if I loved her yet, but I was sure that I was having a wonderful time with her regardless. [damn this is getting long. I haven't even gotten to the part about Doctor Who yet!]

Cue November 2nd, 2012. I was really excited this day. I was going to ask her out - during the fourth quarter, of course. But she didn't show up that day. Needless to say, I had leftover leftover pizza and an extra RC Cola after the game that day. Around 10:30, she sent a text saying that she didn't want us to change and that she was fine how we were already. I mistook that as saying that she didn't want to be with me and cried myself to sleep. Around 2:00, I woke up and basically vented saying how it's fine if she wants us to stay as is, but basically I cared about her very much and wanted to date her regardless.

...I didn't expect her to say yes.

Our first date was pretty awkward. Basically all we did was sit on a sofa watching Doctor Who. [Last three episodes of Series 2 and the first two episodes of Series 3, in case you were wondering.] To fully convey how nervous I was, let me just say that it took about an hour for me to finally put my arm around her. Sitting on the sofa watching Doctor Who, Star Trek, or cheesy zombie movies consisted of about 90% of our dates, but we very quickly got much more comfortable around each other in terms of cuddling. All was going well. I helped her with her depression and all, she helped me with my loneliness, we both loved each other a lot, etc.

Then March comes around. She was going through another hard time, and naturally, I helped her in any way I could. But something seemed a bit off. We hadn't gone on a date in three weeks; she was being a bit weirdly distant. She might be really good at picking up body language, but I'm excellent at picking up subtle changes in voice and word use. She wanted to go on a break. It seemed that every month around the 20th or so she wanted to back off a bit, but this time she was more sure of it than most. I got frustrated how I was constantly not sure if we were together or not, and on March 25th, after only 142 days, we separated completely.

The next few months were interesting, to say the least. The first two months after I was still very broken up about her, and I kept getting completely bullshite advice to try to get me in good spirits again. But the one piece of advice that helped me came from a friend who simply said that the second time is always better. Made sense. I took this advice and actually started talking to a variety of different people. None of the other girls I was talking to ended up working out, but at least I was in the right mindset. At this point, Tatyana and I were friends again. Then summer came. Tatyana was spending the summer without any online communication, so over the summer without talking to her or seeing her, I convinced myself that I was completely over her. That proved to not be the case.

Over band camp and the various band related events that came in late July and earlier this month, I realized that I DO still have feelings for her, they were just buried before. We have been talking extensively again. She said last Thursday that she wouldn't mind dating me a second time. I plan to ask her out this Friday, during the first football game, in the fourth quarter - while eating leftover pizza.