Heja Herrljunga!: Our Story (once and for all!)

As I sit here at Starbucks with an old coffee cup full of wine (what people don't know won't kill them), I feel both exhausted and prematurely relieved to be writing this blog post. I feel I have told Johan's and my story a hundred different times, to a thousand different people, in at least 50 different ways.

Here, for the first (and last) "official" time, is our story:

I have always been a lover of cultures and languages. I had studied 6 years of Spanish through high school and college, and was (at that point) an avid lover of Latin cultures. However, while still in college, I met a guy of Swedish decent in my local gym. He and I dated for several years, and I fell in love with how alien Swedish culture was from what I had grown up knowing. I couldn't get enough of learning how a society like theirs worked, what drove their beliefs and opinions, what was at the root of their life philosophy and how it evolved to be as such.

I also took up learning the language recreationally, because I just thought it was cool-sounding. After college, the relationship came to a natural end, and we parted ways. However, as the months passed, I felt my heart longing to learn more, missing so much that window into a different world that I had. I continued to study the language through books, LiveMocha.com and InterPals.com, but it just wasn't enough. I wanted more than just a resource; I wanted direct access.

So, on 17 February 2010, on a rainy evening while procrastinating going to the gym, I hopped online and went into Facebook. There, I typed in the Swedish version of my ex's last name (the only Swedish surname I really knew at the time), and drew up a list of people. I selected the first goood-looking guy on the list (after all, who wouldn't want their penpal to be cute!), and sent him the following message:

Hej! Du känner mig inte, men jag försöker lära mig svenksa och jag behöver en "penpal"! I just randomly found you on Facebook and was wondering if you'd be willing to send messages a little with me? We don't need to become friends or anything. I'm just trying to learn the language and slang and stuff. Kan du hjälpa mig? Tack så mycket gärna!"

The next day, Johan sent me a message. Over the course of the next 5 years, we would talk almost daily, often times for hours. We also had a variety of failed trips to visit one another, and endured more hardships between us than ever before.

In 2010, we had to cancel my first trip to visit him because of the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull. Then, later that year, we had to cancel because Johan took a job in Norway and couldn't get the time off to be with me.

In 2011, I took a new job and Johan enrolled into a school program, which prevented either of us from being able to visit each other. Later that year, a close friend of Johan's took his life, which cast an even darker pallor on us meeting up for the first time. But still, we talked often.

In 2012, I learned I had a tumor in my breast. After much monitoring, it was determined it was benign, and I knew I was tired of waiting to meet Johan. He was in the process of receiving keys to a second house his family purchased, and so I planned my trip to come visit him. But escrow took forever and I couldn't reschedule my time off. So, I booked my flight for Spain instead. As luck should always have it, Johan received his keys after all.... but flights were impossibly expensive, so we had to forgo meeting up. I remember sitting at London Heathrow on my leg back to Los Angeles, staring at my phone's GPS map and thinking of that quote from the movie GATTACCA where Ethan Hawke said, "I was never so sure of how far I was from my dream, than when I was standing right beside it."

In 2013, Johan finished up school but I slipped two discs in my back and was unable to do anything else but focus on the next 1.5 years of recovery.

Finally, in 2014, we were able to make it happen. I flew out in the summertime, and despite the excitement and the jitters of the first 45 minutes or so, we quickly eased into being in the presence of one another, and the love and laughter has not ended since.

There was one moment in particular, toward the end of my trip, as we were driving home from a ridiculous day of golfing and the sunset made the sky all shades of pink and purple, that I thought to myself, "I could live here all my life and be happy." It was a strong statement, given I adjusted quite roughly to the isolation of the Swedish countryside, no matter how beautiful it was.

Johan and I never spoke of our feelings before that summer of 2014. No doubt that after years of getting to know someone from the inside out, we both felt strongly for one another. But to voice them without meeting in person and finding out for real if the chemistry was truly there, would have been crazy. But the chemistry WAS indeed there, so strong that I couldn't deny it. So strong that my heart must have swelled to 8 times it's size, because I choked on it the whole way to the airport on that awful day I had to leave.

Johan came to visit me for a month between December 2014 and January 2015, and in that time, we decided that our love for each other was unavoidable, and that we needed to be together. We knew we were "the one" for each other, and so we began the process of applying for a Sambo Visa in order that I may emigrate to Sweden to be with him.

Some pictures of us: