Journal Entry #2: “Hometown Love”
This is the part of my story that could probably be a Netflix hit. And although it’s gushy and kind of cliche, it’s totally true.
And really just amazing when I re-count all the things that had to come together over this lifetime to make this a true story. So, I want to share it full heartedly.
To make a very long story short (like a 20+ year long story), Ryan and I went to elementary school together and were in the same 4th grade class. I had a HUGE crush on him. We’re talking about that first 10-year-old crush stuff. The first time in my life I actually would even consider having a “boyfriend”. Before that grade, boys were still yucky. But I do remember suddenly having those little butterflies when I saw Ryan White.
I think as a kid, the feelings we have about other people are the most pure. It’s those feelings before life has had a chance to make us biased, have a “type”, judge, or base decisions around what we think is “good for us”. We are just little balls of love, admiring whoever our heart chooses and going with it. And I sure did admire Ryan White.
We spent the 4th grade smiling at each other and occasionally holding hands. I considered us “together”, and I even think at one point we were “going-out”. A term we used back then that just meant we were boyfriend and girlfriend. We didn’t actually go anywhere (lol). I guess it was the 90’s version of “going steady”.
Every morning I was excited to go to school and see him. The 4th grade was one of my favorite years of school to be honest. Then that school year ended, the summer came and went, and I was super excited to see my boyfriend Ryan again one school started up in the Fall. This was before cell phones and internet so I legit didn’t see or talk to him all summer. Oh, the days of young (no social media) love.
I remember going to school to look at the class list that they would post on the doors before school started. I was so hoping we were in the same class again. But to my dismay, his name was not on my class list. Or any class list…
Ryan White was no longer going to my school. I was very sad, even my babysitter remembers to this day how much I talked about it. But 5th grade life went on, and pretty soon I had a new boyfriend. BUT it was never quite the Ryan White first crush type of thing.
I thought of him every so often pretty much throughout my entire youth. It wasn’t a crazy stalker situation or anything…. I don’t think. He was just one of those childhood memories that you never forget, and they sometimes pop into your head and you wonder what they may be up to or where they are. I even remember when Facebook came out, I was in High School and as I made a new account and added all my cool friends, he popped into my head. I searched for him but couldn’t find him.
I had a couple of serious relationships throughout college, so I wasn’t normally available. The stars really had to align and I had to be single at the right time to be going to parties and on the “prowl” so to speak. And over the summer of 2010, it just happened to be one of those times… Just like out of a movie, I went to a random party with some friends, and BAM, there he was!
I recognized him immediately and I remember going up to him and saying something like, “Ryan White?! It’s me, Stephanie Phoebus! Your girlfriend from 4th grade!”. He had NO idea who I was and probably thought I was a crazy person. After that, life just kept putting us back together. It was like the universe was saying, “okay how many times do ya’ll need to see each other before this goes somewhere?”.
We wound up at a few more parties together that year, a snowboarding trip and eventually on a 2-week vacation together with a mutual friend. It wasn’t until that vacation trip out to Utah that we actually connected and began dating not long after. Only problem was, I had moved there and he was back in Maryland.
Needless to say, we fell for each other over a long distance relationship of many long Skype conversations and a few trips back and forth. And eventually I decided to move back home to see what would come of it. I figured I could always move back to Utah but I could potentially lose an amazing relationship if I didn’t come home and try it out.
Good thing I did!
On July 3rd, 2012 Ryan proposed to me. It was supposed to be on July 4th, but the boy couldn’t wait (lol). It was one of the happiest days of my life. We got married in April 2014 and welcomed a baby boy in 2016. Then boy and girl twins in 2019. This year we will be celebrating 7 years of marriage and moving from our starter home to our forever home when we find it.
Because we are starting a new chapter with our complete little family, I thought it would be appropriate to re-count our love story, especially since it all started in our little hometown of Beltsville 25 years ago.
