Revealing my big news

Strange how life flows in circles sometimes.

Today I woke up at about 4am as usual.  But I wasn't awakened by the cat, and I got WAY more than four hours of sleep.  I put myself to bed last night at the ridiculously early hour of 8pm, because my day of being awesome did take a bit out of me after all. 

Just for the sake of completeness I will report that I finished my yester-awesome-day by cooking lentil soup for dinner, supervising my ten year old while he (reluctantly) cleaned and vacuumed the living room, and then taught my daughter how to make rice pudding.  Also watched "Hell's Kitchen" and "Huge".

The episode of Huge included lots of romantic teenage angst over wanting to be in love with someone, and also bits about writing poetry or love songs to try to express your deep feelings, whether they be for a particular person or just in general.  That episode really spoke to me, because I find writing to be my most powerful therapy sometimes.  When I feel things deeply I cannot bear NOT to write about them.  I've kept a diary since I was about 14 years old, and to me writing is a basic need.  

Sometimes I write poetry, but mostly I just write.

Lately I've been writing a lot (though not here).  I've been writing to my new boyfriend Johan. 

Gosh.  Seeing it written down (in public!) like that is still so strange and amazing to me!  "My new boyfriend Johan".   Ooooo, I feel all tingly over it!

This is quite a story. 

Johan is a new user of the Yuba Mundo, just like me.  Well, not JUST like me, because he is an experienced cyclist already and is in pretty good shape.  But he noticed my blog because of the link from the Yuba Mundo website.  Then he found me on Facebook, and we started chatting and giving high-fives over how smart we both were to buy this wonderful contraption.  It was like being in a little two-man booster club!

He was very sweet to chat with.  He teased me over being a Farmville addict, and I smiled inside to see him being so enthusiastic and cheerful about his new bike, and gushing to me in slightly broken English, because his native language is Dutch.   Our one-liners became paragraphs.  We switched to e-mails and our paragraphs became letters.

I found out that just like me, Johan has Asperger's Syndrome.  AS is not a very well known or understood disorder.  It isn't a disease, it's more like a different way of being built.  He and I are both perfectly normal people -- for aspies.  But this difference in the way our brains are wired makes us very socially awkward around neurotypical people.  We think certain ways of talking and behaving make perfect sense, but most people would think we were pretty off the wall for behaving the way we do.  But the huge blessing is that although fitting in with most of society is anywhere from awkward to extremely difficult for us, recognizing and understanding each other is extremely easy.

So besides the fact that we had this one MASSIVE thing in common (okay, two, because we both ride a Mundo!) we also discovered very quickly that we are about the same age, both divorced ten years, with similar passion for environmentalism and with compatible religious views.    So how in the world could we possibly NOT want to start dating?

Well... the fact that he lives in Belgium and I live in Washington State USA does seem to be a TINY impediment...  But honestly, compared to all the other things we just overcame to be right for each other, what's a mere 5,000 miles?

So while the rest of the world tortures itself with angst over love, always wondering where they stand and whether they'll be loved back and whether their love is being honest and true with them, suddenly I don't have that problem anymore.  Johan and I (like pretty much all aspies) are almost congenitally honest and up-front with everything we think and feel.  It took us all of three days to begin feeling like we belonged together, and only a few days beyond that to feel like we were really falling in love. 

So obviously the next step is for us to actually MEET.  So obviously Johan will be flying out to meet me some time within the next month.  After all, it would be just silly to continue dating each other if it turned out that in person we didn't have good chemistry and didn't really click.

My god, it's so incredible.  It's so SENSIBLE, yet amazingly weird.  NOTHING in this life is sensible!   Now here I get to have a relationship that isn't based on games and selfishness and hormones and societal expectations.  I get to have a relationship purely based on the connection of two souls who respect and admire and appreciate each other.  And it wasn't even hard!   He's intelligent and sweet and funny and kind and brave and transparent and wonderful.  He's everything I needed and wanted in a man, plus several bonuses like being international and multilingual and musical and stuff.  And he likes me.  He has read my blog and knows pretty much everything about me, and has decided that he totally likes me anyway.  Maybe even LOVES me.  (sigh)

Truth be told, when he shows up here he would have to have his head on backwards and be wearing mismatched socks for me to not find him attractive.  Chemistry be damned, I WANT this man!  Heck, I might even be willing to overlook having his head on backwards.  (Might make kissing awkward, though.)

So that's my big news.  He and I have been joking for a week now about Yuba Mundo's slogan "What a Bicycle Can Do".  Apparently a bicycle can bring two people together from opposite ends of the earth.