Title: First Sight
Fandom: Original
Challenge: Together
Rating: PG
Length: 950
Content Notes: This is the closest I can find to the right tags?  This is a true story; it's technically autobiography/literary non-fiction.
Summary: In July it will be twenty years since I met my husband at school camp. For me, the day we met will always be our anniversary.


I don’t believe in love at first sight.

I still don’t believe it, even though it happened to me.

For so many years, I didn’t even know what had happened. I’ve never been very good at feelings. I certainly didn’t understand what I felt when we met.

It was school camp. We were fourteen. We were on a walk—a forced march, of the usual camp kind—and on the way back we fell into step together. We quickly outdistanced the rest of the group. It started to rain—or didn’t—depending on which one of us you asked. He was wrong. Obviously.

And ten minutes into a conversation that flowed more easily and more mutually and more distant to any topic of real significance than any I’d had in my life, I felt some floodgate inside open with a click. I didn't know what it meant.  All I knew was that this someone was someone that I would do everything in my power to spend more time with.

I watched him.

He watched me.

A few days later, when I thought I was alone, I decided to master the climbing wall on the other side of camp. I tried and tried and failed and failed. I fell again and again, and again—but I was alone, and the embarassment and the fear of judgement that would have driven me away any other time wasn't with me.

I’ve always liked being alone.

It took me an hour and a half of falling, again, and again, and again—of getting stuck, of giving up, of starting again—but I made it, made it all the way to the other end.

And as I dropped to the ground one last time, ten metres from where I’d last started, fingers blistered and toes stinging, tasting victory and exhilaration, there came a quiet round of applause.

I’d thought I was alone. But he’d been watching me.

If he’d been anyone else, I would have been horrified. Blushed, stammered, run, hid. Spent the next few days having panic attacks at having been seen as an idiot, seen as imperfect, seen... at all. Had the applause been real? Had it been mocking? How long had the applause been waiting?

But that floodgate was open—and it made me strangely brave, and trusting, because it knew something I could not. I swept an ironic bow in his direction; more proud, more nakedly me, than I’d ever been before another person in my life. And yet… despite his presence I felt calmly, blissfully alone.

The moment was over; we went our separate ways without a word.

It was four months before we called each other ‘friend’. Over a year before he called me ‘girlfriend’. Six years before he called me ‘wife’. And thirteen before he referred to me as ‘Mummy’.

When I held my squishy newborn son in my arms, a blanket-wrapped bundle of needs seeking satisfaction, attachment hormones flooding my body, on a day I’d been told over and over again that I’d finally understand what it was to fall head over heels for someone the moment you saw them….

I didn’t.

I don’t believe in love at first sight. And I didn’t feel love. It wasn’t the most incredible joy I’d ever felt. I was... happy? Pleased. Relieved, he was normal. I’d always wanted children. I wondered, in a disconnected kind of way, if this was it. If this lukewarm satisfaction in a job done was the prize of parenthood, for me.

For ten months, I lavished almost every hour of every day on my son, wondering, wondering: is there something wrong with me? No, not something wrong with me: is there something else wrong with me? Why don’t I feel properly, not even now? I celebrated every milestone. Would I be sad if he died? It would be a terrible waste, of course. Clearly he was an excellent example of a baby. I’d put a lot of work into him. A lot of resources. A lot of attention. Of course I’d be sad. Would I be devastated? Would it ruin my life forever? Really?

At ten months old, he looked at me, all bright smile and clear eyes, and said, “Wawawawa.”

It didn’t mean anything. It was a comment more distant to any topic of real significance than any I’d had in my life.

Well, except for the one, because this time I knew what that feeling meant, and I finally recognised that feeling I’d first known at fourteen. The feeling of floodgates opening and my entire being saying… you are mine.

I hadn't believed in love at first sight. I’d always assumed I fell in love later, slowly, sensibly. Love at first sight is a ridiculous myth; it doesn’t make the least bit of sense to love someone you don't know.

It took me ten months to fall in love with my firstborn son. Ten minutes to recognise the love of my life.

But I don’t believe in love at first sight.

Because love is more than just a set of floodgates opening, deep inside. Love is every day for twenty years, not closing them again.

It’s more than just recognising a kindred mind in the quagmire of an alien land. It’s every day for twenty years, pushing and pulling through the mud in the same direction.

It’s more than just wanting to do everything in your power to spend more time with someone. It’s every day for twenty years, being calmly, blissfully alone together.

I don’t believe in love at first sight.

But for me, that’s where it started.