I clicked the random button.
Admittedly, there were several small decisions that led to this one. I decided to see Harriet the Spy in theaters when I was 11 years old, which sparked the decision to keep a journal. I decided I wanted my journal to respond to me, so I decided to keep a blog. I decided I wasn’t getting enough responses by just letting the blog sit there, so I decided to click the random button.
The website I decided to use for my blog was called Open Diary. It wasn’t the most popular, that was probably Xanga at the time, but I really liked the layout of it. There was a homepage for each diarist where you could describe yourself, and a sidebar listed titled entries you could click on like a new chapter in a book. They didn’t all just run together the way most blogs did.
Open Diary had at least 100,000 bloggers active at the time. As I said, I was frustrated to not get as many comments as I’d hoped for. I don’t know why I wanted people to comment on my life. Maybe I wanted them to tell me I was a good writer. I think it was more likely that I wanted people to validate that I was normal. To see my everyday concerns and say, yes. I have those concerns too. What struggles we humans all face. And anonymous readers could offer sympathy and empathy in ways that friends could not. But anonymous readers eluded me – until the first time I hit the random button.
The button is exactly what it sounds like. As long as someone had their diary marked as public, you could be taken to that person’s writing. I did this a few times and met a couple of people I would consider friends for the next few years. I enjoyed reading about other people's perspectives on their own lives. They were mostly vastly different from my own, and it was fun to see what others got up to since I was still living a pretty boring high school existence. I watched new friends fall in and out of love, get married, get divorced, adopt children, and generally live life.
I was probably, in some strange way, hoping to meet someone special. I had already had a short lived, somewhat intense-for-what-it-was internet boyfriend relationship thing. I did not want another one. Except that I kind of did. I was always looking for romance.
My internet boyfriend had described himself as a goth, so I was always somewhat intrigued by boys in black. I also planned to study abroad in London during my college career, and I thought it would be an awful lot of fun to come home with a British boyfriend. So when I happened upon the diary of a Welshman who described himself as a loaner, who wore all black and sat in the back of all of his classes, I was definitely intrigued.
I have no idea what the first entry that I read in his diary was about. But I left a little note saying I had been there and observed and read and sympathized. In a reciprocal move, he did the same. And we kept it up. We kept reading each other’s exploits. Mine were probably mostly whining about boys I liked who weren’t interested in me. His were full of college coolness, including parties and the pursuit of sexual exploits.
But perhaps the most intriguing thing about this Welshman was a common interest, we shared – the WB television show “Angel.” This was the sequel to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which I had somehow missed, but the Welshman was in love with. However, “Angel” was my favorite show, and I knew very few people who watched it. A guy who wore all black and liked the same show as me? Yes, please.
And then there was our mutual love of Star Wars and Harry Potter. That could keep me talking to anyone for hours. (In fact, it did just that at my college freshman orientation, and I lived to regret it later when the very strange boy I had spoken to came to hang out in my dorm room and just… stayed there way past when we stopped talking. He sat on my floor and twisted his leg hairs. So okay, Harry wasn’t always a good basis for friendship, but it was something.)
Welshman was majoring in something called Americans Studies and was infinitely interested in American politics. When a mutual hatred of then president George W. Bush surfaced, I felt our already real connection deepen. The absolute height of Internet conversation at the time was AOL instant messenger. I asked Welshman if he used it, which, being British, he did not, but he downloaded the free service in order to talk to me. We began conversing pretty regularly, and I have to admit, I couldn’t help being interested in this guy. We had a lot of stuff in common. We could talk to each other for hours about actual issues and interests.
It was exciting, but it also felt kind of stupid. How successful could an Internet relationship with someone from another country really be? He was in real, actual college, chasing after real actual girls. What would he want with the high school senior in America?
And then, I went to college. At the same time, the Welshman came to America. As part of his degree, he had to do an entire year abroad. He chose to study at SUNY Albany, the closest university to New York City that his university offered an exchange with. Had I been going to school in New Jersey, we would’ve been so close to each other! But no. I chose to do my freshman year at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina. I still figured I would finally get to meet the Welshman in person at some point when I was home. And so I decided to hedge my bets and let him know how I felt about him.
I think I caught him a little off guard, though tone is entirely unreadable on AOL instant messenger. But after a short time to process, he decided he might also have feelings for me. He remembered when I had gone on a Caribbean cruise with my grandmother that summer and disappeared unexpectedly for over a week from the Internet. He had actually been worried about what had happened to me. Could this mean he also had feelings?
We discussed meeting around Christmas time, but it turned out that the Welshman was almost as much of a hopeless romantic as I was, though I don’t think he would’ve admitted it at the time. So, with the prospect of a real and rather meaningful relationship on the horizon, time was of the essence. The Welshman checked his school calendar and saw that he had a day off in October. He asked if he could come visit me in South Carolina for a long weekend.
Finally! A boy who I liked who was interested in me! There was some brief hesitation as I worried about meeting a stranger from the Internet and letting him stay in my dorm room, but I knew my new friends would accompany me to meet him in a safe manner. What the heck. I said come visit.
Our conversations took on new excitement, and on September 8, 2003, we decided we wouldn’t entertain the notion of hooking up with anyone else in the meantime.
On October 3, the Welshman flew to South Carolina and took a cab to one of the dining halls at my school. He wore a shirt proclaiming, “Caution: Scary Welshman” so I could identify him. I was a little stressed that day because I had to sing in my voice recital class after lunch. I distinctly remember meeting my friends at the Cino Grill, and the boy was just sitting there reading. Due to my nerves about singing to the other musical theater majors, I don’t even remember what I thought about him initially. I ran to the table, dropped off my stuff, said, “Hi, nice to meet you. I have to get my lunch,” and waited in line for a grilled chicken sandwich smothered in ketchup. The Welshman, or Jon, as I knew him by now, was pretty quiet as my friends and I chattered away. Then it was off to recital class. I told him I would see him again afterwards. I think he hung out with my friends in the meantime.
One of my friends, Brittany, was the only one of us with a car on campus. She was one of the most kind and generous people I have ever met, and she never complained about giving us rides. Determined to give us a good first night together, my friends decided we would go to Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum, followed by a very romantic group dinner at Applebee’s.
But something very unexpected happened in Ripley’s that sort of cemented our relationship. We were looking through some question and answer boxes, the kind with a question printed on a liftable lid. When you lift the lid up, the answers are hidden underneath. As we read through the amazing facts, we got to one that asked about a town that has 50 letters in its name. My friends and I laughed at the absurdity of such a notion and recoiled in horror when we saw the monstrosity of letters that did not belong together underneath the lid.
“Oh! “Jon said with a laugh. “That’s Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch!” Our heads all turned in slow motion to stare at him, our mouths slack in a mix of awe and slight horror. “It’s in Wales,” he clarified.
I don’t really know what about this struck me as so funny, but it did. Until then, Jon and I had been sort of awkward around each other. For some reason, this absurdly long town, which, for the record, I have since been to and he has not, broke down the walls a bit. He even snuck a first kiss somewhere in one of the Believe It or Not rooms.
My relationship with Jon was very serious very early on. Yes, we were living 800 miles apart, but we tried to see each other about once a month. Jon always flew down to me. He even memorably made it down for Valentine’s Day that year, and we had a lovely dinner at one of our favorite Italian restaurants in the area, Villa Genaro, and went to see the Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore romcom 50 First Dates. Despite the distance, and thanks to the internet, we talked almost constantly. We chatted during breaks between classes, or while we were writing papers, or after going out and having a few drinks. (Although not as much on that last one.)
If smartphones had been a thing at the time, we would have been the worst addicts.
That summer, I finally made it to Albany to help Jon move out of his dorm room. He came back to NJ with me, and with room and board free, he extended his stay in America for quite awhile. My mom gave us the okay for him to stay until the end of July, over a month. We didn’t bother to tell my dad. At some point, he asked my mom how long Jon was staying, and she gave him a vague, “Oh, awhile.”
A lot of the summer was just for hanging out together, which is wonderful when you’re young and in love. We didn’t have to do anything but be in each other’s company to be having the best time. We did take a road trip to DC to see fireworks on the 4th, where we sat on a hillside and watched star shaped explosions illuminate the city skyline.
The day Jon flew back to Wales was a somber one. We drove him to the Philadelphia airport, and I clutched his hand tightly the whole way. After spending almost every waking moment together for two months, not seeing him for the foreseeable future was going to be quite jarring. Before he boarded the plane, we clung to each other, and breaking apart from our embrace felt like ripping half off half my skin. My parents took me to the legendary-but-now-defunct Mastori’s Diner for the first time afterwards, and while their sweet cheese bread was a revelation for the tastebuds, it still didn’t provide complete solace for my loss.
Did I know at the time that Jon’s leaving would not be an ending but an explosion of just-the-beginnings? I think I had some inkling in my soul. During that summer, I had gone to a homeopathic doctor who, in the course of conversation, had wanted to know if Jon was “the one.” I stuttered through a noncommittal response because, hey, I was only 18. He was my first serious boyfriend. How did I know if he was “the one”? But Dr. Genco, with a twinkle in his eye, leaned forward and said, “Come on. You know. You have a feeling.”
And he was right. I had known, or at least hoped, that I had found my soulmate.
The next four years of my life were counted more in months than days - how many months would it be until I would see my love again? We took turns flying across the Atlantic to steal just a week here, two weeks there. Every moment was simultaneously filled with fiery passion and quiet, content companionship. We took in West End shows in London and feasted in New Jersey’s finest diners. We showed each other the best and strangest parts of the lands we called home.
And all the while, our friendship grew in tandem with our love. When I was in 8th grade, my health teacher, Mr. Scully, had taught us that the person we married should be our best friend. The advice stuck with me, and I was so excited to have found that person.
In 2008, I was proudly able to make Jon’s dreams come true when he finally moved to America. It was something he always aspired to, and I’m not sure if he would have had the impetus or means without me. He came over on a student visa to get his second Master’s Degree in education from Montclair. My parents graciously allowed him to live with us throughout the durations of his studies. Now, when I traveled to Wales in the summer, he was by my side. It made the 6-8 hour plane flight a lot more palatable!
Obviously, after uprooting lives and moving across oceans, we began discussing eventual marriage. We were still young, unemployed, living at home, and Jon was going to school, so the plan wasn’t imminent. We thought maybe we’d wait until I was 25 and Jon was 27 for him to put a ring on it.
I was never a girl who planned her wedding details, but once I hit 23 and Jon and I had been together for 5 years, I started eyeing up other people’s engagement rings. I still didn’t start planning, but I started to think about planning. And then, despite what we had agreed on, Jon proposed! Because we were still pretty young, we took 2 1/2 years to plan the affair. It was a great wedding, and it was on TV, which is another story for another time.
Post marriage life was filled with so many more adventures. House buying – twice. Travels to Israel, India, Italy, Croatia, Norway, Germany, Amsterdam, Belgium… Not to mention many trips to many Disney Parks. And, of course, the greatest adventure – our beautiful daughter, Lily.
I don’t know how Open Diary’s algorithm for the random button worked. But the point is, when I clicked it way back in 2002, it certainly worked for me. Whether it was time of day or some key words or something totally unknown, the Internet certainly worked in mysterious ways that day. My life would be the same if it weren’t for a single click of a button.
❤️❤️❤️ such a romantic “meant to be” kinda story!