"The Girl Who Didn't Wait For Me"

We met because of the alphabet.  During my senior year in high school we had a class together in which she sat in front of me because her last name came before mine alphabetically.  We were even assigned to do a project together for the class.  We became friends, but I waited until the summer to ask her out on a date.  I had just graduated and was preparing to serve my mission, but she had two more years of school left before she would graduate.

On our first date, I took her to play miniature golf.  After finishing the course, we found a place to sit down and talk.  Normally shy and quiet, I would typically run out of things to talk about pretty quickly, but on that night we talked for at least an hour, maybe longer.  It was a good sign; I kind of figured that my future wife would be a girl I would have little trouble making conversation with.

I took this girl out on a few more dates over the summer and fall.  On one date I took her on a picnic at Mirror Lake in the Uintah Mountains.  While hiking around the lake after eating, we got caught in the rain, and by the time we got back to the car, we were soaking wet.  She asked me to put my arm around her to help warm her up, and this was the first time I had put my arm around a girl, which, as you might guess, was quite exciting.

I was preparing to serve a mission, and I had made a decision to wait until after I came home to have a girlfriend, but I suddenly found myself falling for this girl.  I even asked her to be my girlfriend, right there, by the lake!  She said she would think about it, and a few days later, to my relief, she said that she wasn't ready for a boyfriend.

We went out a couple more times, and then I was off on the great adventure, my mission.  She said she would write to me, but stressed that she was not waiting for me.  One of the last times I saw her before I left, I asked her if I should go on a mission or not.  I wanted to know what she would say.  Fortunately, she gave the right answer, telling me that I should go.

Two years later, she would tell me that she had, in fact, been waiting for me.  She would say that she knew I was the right one for her the moment I put my arm around her.  But she didn't tell me any of this because she didn't want to distract me from the work.  Ironically, I would find the ambiguity of our relationship to be, at times, distracting.  Recently, when I typed up my missionary journals on my computer, I changed all the references to her to "the girl who is not waiting for me."

We wrote each other every month or so, then, with about four months to go, her letters just stopped.  As it happened, she started dating this boy and soon found herself in an abusive relationship.  After four months this guy proposed . . . and she said yes!  But then her parents found out and put a stop to the whole thing.  Three days later, I got off the plane at Salt Lake International.  I was home, and ready for a relationship, but she wasn't.

Nonetheless, we started dating  I suspected that something was wrong, however, when she kept telling me to slow things down.  No matter how slow I tried to take things, it was still too fast for her.  Finally, she suggested that we should see other people.  And like an idiot, I believed her.

At the same time, I was having a tough time adjusting to post mission life.  I hated coming home from my mission, and the first six months after I got home were horrible.  No one came to my homecoming meeting, except the girl who didn't wait for me. I had to pick a college and get a job.  I was one of the first guys to leave on a mission, and was thus one of the first to get back, and even then we all had gone our separate ways because, well, that's life.

I ended up enrolling at LDS Business College, which also happened to be the school the girl who didn't wait for me was attending.  I didn't pick the school because she was a student there, but for other reasons.  Still, I thought it would be nice to have someone there that I already knew.  As I said, adjusting to post-mission life was difficult.  I can remember going for a walk one night and thinking that things couldn't possibly get worse.  Never say that, because things can always get worse.

On the first day of spring quarter -- LDSBC was then one of the few schools still on the quarter system as opposed to the semester system -- I ran into the girl who didn't wait in the halls, and she flat out ignored me.  I called her up that night to ask her about what happened and she said that she was just too involved in conversation with the friend she was walking with.  I said something about putting herself in my shoes and how I would have appreciated a friendly greeting of some sort.  I tried not to sound as if I were chewing her out, but how else was she going to take it?

The next day, I again saw her in the halls at school, and I went up to her to apologize.  Before I could, though, she cut me off and said that she felt like she was being suffocated.  Then she said that if I loved her I would walk away.  I asked how this affected our friendship, but she had no answer.  As I sat in my next class, I was overcome by this feeling of emptiness, but I was also confused.  "Did she really just ask me to walk away?"

That night I went by her house to talk it out and find a solution.  But the girl who didn't wait was anything but receptive.  She would not listen to me and just kept asking why I was prolonging it.  Finally I said, "Okay, but when I walk out that door, does that mean we aren't friends anymore?"  Again, she had no answer.

In just seven days, things had gone from bad to worse.  My best and, as it appeared, only friend had just declared war.  I was not about to give up, but what could I do?  It seemed that no matter what I did, it just made things worse.  For the next few days I really wondered if I would ever reach out to anyone again.

I wrote the girl a letter to try and explain my side of the story.  I got an angry letter back as a response.  She said that I would not leave her alone even though she kept telling me no.  The problem was, she had never said no.  During the first few months after I got home she had kept saying "Well, let's just see how things go."  She then suggested that I back off a little, and so I did.  Nothing about this made any sense.

The only thing I could do, at this point, was to give her space.  I remembered then that I had been in this position before.

When I started high school there was one girl that I really liked, and I thought, perhaps, that she might also like me.  I had become acquainted with her two years earlier at a stake dance; she was always nice and friendly to me, which was not something I experienced from other girls I knew.  One day during that first week of my sophomore year, we met up and walked home together.  I can still see her blond hair as it was highlighted by the mid-afternoon sun, and I can see her smile.  Every time I was around her I had this wonderful feeling, and I think I may have started falling for her.

But there was a small problem, I had decided to wait until I turned 16 to start dating and that was still a few months off.  Alas, the day finally came, and I asked this girl to the Junior Prom.  On reflection, it was probably not the best idea to make such a big event like a prom my first ever date.  But I asked her, she said yes and, for me at least, it was a magical evening.  I waited a few weeks before asking her out again, but this time she said she was busy, and from the way she said it I did not feel encouraged to ask her again.

She had always been so nice and friendly, but that changed after the prom.  Sometimes she was still friendly, but other times she was distant, even cold.  When she was friendly, I might have felt a little encouraged, perhaps that she might still like me, only to then experience the cold.  We went for a walk one day in the spring, and I thought we both had a good time so, again after a couple of weeks, I asked her out.  Once again she said that she was busy.  At that point I probably should have walked away, but I was experiencing some very strong emotions that I just didn't know how handle, and for the next two years I continued to bounce back and forth between hope and despair over this girl.

Even as I did, I tried to move forward.  I met another girl, and this time I told myself that I would be more careful.  I wanted to build a solid friendship before I asked her out, and I did, waiting until the following winter when I asked her to . . . the Junior Prom.  She didn't answer right away, and I started to worry that she might not answer at all.  Finally, however, she called me to say that she would love to go to the prom with me.

The following day I asked if she would help me with an assignment I had that week for my photography class, which was to take some outside portraits.  I thought we might also talk about plans for the dance.  While she agreed, she later told me that she did not like having her picture taken.  That night she called me again, only this time it was to say that she only wanted friendship and that she could not go to the dance with me.  I was stunned, and devastated.

The only good thing about this was that I knew where I stood with her.  After a few months I called her up to ask if we could talk.  As we did we learned something about friendship and became better friends because of it.

In the aftermath of this experience I finally decided to heed the counsel I had been given repeatedly to wait until after my mission to have a girlfriend.  As noted, I was still experiencing some difficulty with the first girl, and sometimes we would have trouble just trying to be friends.  I still had those strong feelings, and I kept telling myself that I couldn't just walk away.  In the end, her family moved away, and only then could I begin to forget about her.

If I had it all to do over again, I would have heeded the counsel sooner of waiting until after my mission.  I would have gone on as many dates as I could have with as many different girls as I could.  No strings, no expectations, just a date.

While it has been heard of, very few actually marry their high school sweethearts and live happily ever after.  As the motivational speaker Hyrum Smith once said, "Only one in a hundred wait."

Apparently the one out of a hundred was reserved for my last district leader.  I made the mistake one day of pressuring him to read aloud the Christmas card she sent him.  I was by then just a few weeks away from returning home, and I wanted a girl to say the kind of things to me that she wrote to him.  On my birthday a member family made me a cake, complete with lighted candles, and before I blew them out I wished that I would soon have a girlfriend.

Now I was home, ready to have a girlfriend, but, as is often the case, there was something else on the agenda.  The girl who didn't wait for me had pushed me away, and the only thing I could do was give her space.  Sometimes you have to know when to "weary the unrighteous judge" and when to walk away.

Weeks went by where I tried to avoid her, but I would occasionally see her in the halls at school.  When I could, I would turn and go another way.  But sometimes we could not help but pass each other in the halls.  When that happened, she would give me an angry look.  She had said that she didn't want us to be enemies, but that is what I felt that I had become.  So one day I stopped her to say that I felt like I had become her enemy and that I didn't deserve it.  My voice got louder as she ran away, and everyone in that part of the school heard me.  That night, her father called mine to threaten legal action if I did not leave her alone.

I had no choice but to back off, even though backing off made things worse, it was a very real Catch-22, a no-win situation.  For a month I stayed as far away from her as I could.  It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.  In fact, I didn't manage to make it an entire month.  After two weeks, I went by her house and left an anonymous note on her doorstep which said "Haven't we both been hurt enough?  Stop the war.  Just stop the war!"

Two weeks later as the quarter came to a close, I lost my job, and I said, "I can't handle the war and losing my job at the same time, so its time to put a stop to the war."  I went to see the girl who didn't wait, and said it was time we talked.  As an ice breaker, I told her the story about the girl who first said yes to the Junior Prom, but then changed her mind.

The story seemed to do the trick.  Suddenly, the barrier between us fell, and we were able to talk it out.  We were still friends, and though we both said we were interested in other people, we could still hang out with each other.  Now began a rather surreal period where we were spending a lot of time together but, technically, not dating each other.

One day we went hiking and by chance ran into some friends of hers from LDSBC.  While we talked with them, the girl started giving her attention to another guy which, naturally, made me jealous.  But, as we were technically not dating, I pretended to be unconcerned.  That just made her upset, and when we were alone she chewed me out for not wanting to share her with other people.  And for a moment it seemed that I had done it again.

This time, however, she called me to apologize, and she admitted that she was trying to make me jealous.  The girl who waited also told me that the guy she gave her attention to turned out to be a bit of a jerk.  A few more weeks went by, with a few more non-dates.  Then, one night, we sat on her porch talking.  I told her a few of my missionary stories, which all had something to do with overcoming fear.  I was trying to persuade her to take a leap of faith.

Suddenly, the girl who waited for me, turned and leaned back on my shoulder, and I put my arms around her.  It was an incredible moment.  From that moment we were officially dating again.  More importantly, we were boyfriend-girlfriend.  The relationship I had waited four and a half years for had finally come about.  The rest, as they say, is history.