I Knew It Was Love When I Realized I Would Give Things Up For Him

The moment I knew I was truly in love with him was the moment I realized how afraid I was. I wasn’t afraid that I’d said yes to the wrong person or the fact that I would only be with one guy for the rest of my life. I was scared to death of even the thought of going on in this world without him.

Ever since I can remember, the things that frighten the common person are the things that used to make me feel alive. In other words, I was an adrenaline junkie. Skydiving, base-jumping, and hang-gliding were just a few feats on my horizon.

It all began when I was 16 years old. Maybe it was the hormones or maybe it was just the adventurous gene I inherited from my mother, but I was dead-set on wanting to jump out of an airplane. Most girls that age are only concerned with boys and make-up and popularity. Not me. I wanted to rest on the wind as I fell from the sky. Of course, rules and regulations made it so I had to wait until my 18th birthday, which is exactly what I did.

Fast forward to my 21st birthday — I experienced a lull in my heart-pounding adventures, which meant that I was due for another one. It was time to check another adventure off my list: bungee-jumping. Most people in their right minds would never bungee-jump, let alone bungee-jump off a crane in the middle of the ocean. But that made me want to do it even more.

Nothing scared me.

I sky-dived in the 115 degree heat of Arizona over cacti and fields of dirt. I bungee-jumped over an ocean filled with sharks and jellyfish and stingrays (maybe they weren’t visible, but they were in the back of my mind nonetheless). And that was just the beginning. I had so much more on my list. There was SO much more I wanted to do. But that all changed when I met him.

I met him when I was 23, and I fell for him almost instantly. It wasn’t just his noticeably hazel-green eyes that drew me to him. It was his laugh, his sense of self, his kindness, his love for God, and the way he made me feel like I’d known him forever, even on our first get together.

We had been dating for a good amount of time when his birthday started to approach. Thinking it would be so much fun to include him in my craziness, I bought us a pair of passes to go sky-diving. It was a day or two before the “big day,” when I completely chickened out. I had no idea why I was so scared, but I finally figured it out. I didn’t want anything to go wrong. I didn’t want something to happen to where it would prevent us from spending the rest of our lives together.

It sounds crazy, I know. But that’s how I knew how strong my feelings for him were. After that day, I found myself holding onto the armrests a little tighter on just a regular flight (no jumping involved). I even found myself being afraid to take long trips without him. I just loved him too much.

It’s a little unfortunate my drive for out of the ordinary experiences has dwindled, but maybe that’s what happens when you’re in love. Different things become important to you.

All I know is that my adrenaline-junkie days can take a back seat to all the days ahead of him and me. I realized I would rather spend the rest of my life doing simple and ordinary things with him, than doing something that could jeopardize that. Free-falling from a plane and bungee-jumping over the ocean will never give me as much of a thrill as the thought of spending forever with the man I’m so madly in love with. So maybe being afraid isn’t such a bad thing. It’s only made me want to hold onto someone I love that much more.