(Longtime MegFowler.com readers: What you have just seen is a photo of Meg with a boy. I know you’re not used to it. Hell, we’re not used to it. We don’t normally feature this type of content, do we? No, we don’t. In fact, we’ve made a point of not featuring this type of content and while we don’t regret that, per se, it’s time we loosened up a little because that boy?

Up there?

That one?

He’s good.)

So I went to Boston. I didn’t write much more about it than the one post, because, well… I was too busy having fun!

I’ll give you a few highlights of the trip in point form to make up for my silence:

Getting lost in the web of the MBTA, from old trains to buses that talk and all manner of tourists asking ME for directions

Sacrificing my hair to the wind each day

Learning to use a camera with my awesome, awesome friend Matt who I was thrilled to meet:

Oh, and meeting these people, too (just a few of so many amazing ones I met):



(Laura, Gruen and Shelley! And Andreas. Shelley, does he have a blog?)

Walking approximately 4,000 miles to find a Whole Foods, and finding MIT instead (does that mean I’m smart?)

Delighting in the local accent, and picking it up occasionally in conversation to my great joy

Falling in love with brownstones in Beacon Hill

Noting the blunt nature of US Gov’t signage:



Experiencing the magic of yet another laundromat in a major US city (I loved the one I went to in San Diego, too. I love laundry way too much)

A delicious 4-course tasting menu at Radius, that actually had about four more courses and an extra dessert

Chasing squirrels

A design reception at Montage for Toord Boontje where one woman had a diamond ring so large I believe I would have to sell all my organs (and yours) on the black market to ever afford it

Hanging out with a certain someone who spent four hours trying to make “Sanford and Son” the ringtone for his Blackberry

It was awesome.

What else was awesome?

This event.

I’d taken an active role in helping organize it from afar, but I can’t tell you how amazing it was to actually BE there and meet gazillions of people I’d only previously met online (and to surprise them with my presence, too!)

Not to mention that the cause of preventing domestic violence means a lot to me — I spent years working with, and caring for women who had survived things I can’t possibly imagine going through. We raised a lot of money to help out these women (and their families) in Massachusetts, and that is AWESOME.

Here are some photos from the event to display further awesomeness (OMG, FULL BODY PHOTOS OF MEG? HAS THE WORLD GONE MAD?)…

All the volunteers who helped with the event:

A certain young man receiving a gift from the volunteers (and making a face that should tell you a lot about why I like him):

Posing for the paparazzi:

And some dear folks:

And some fun I had at the end of the night:

Here’s a bit of video of a certain young man, as a bonus:

He’s cute, no?

I guess this would be an appropriate time to tell you who he is.

Gradon Tripp is someone I’ve been talking to online since February of this year — first as friends, and then as HMMMMM I LIKE YOU COULD THIS WORK?

Email (mercifully free), phone calls (anyone want to buy a kidney?), text messages (a spleen? no?)… you name it. We used every mode of communication possible to dig deep into our brains, our hearts, and our lives. I’m no internet dater, but this didn’t feel like that, anyway. It just felt inevitable.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that he caught my eye rather significantly, to the point where I knew I wanted to meet him properly… and to make this thing “real.”

EEEK!

I have a rather illustrious history with the opposite sex and my rather atrocious body image.

I’m a round girl. I wasn’t always a round girl, but there you go. I am now. Not everyone likes round girls, so I’ve spent much of my dating life waiting for the other shoe to drop… in other words, for my roundness to become an issue. For what was going on below my heart to trump everything that was going on from my heart up.

It sucked, to be blunt.

But back to Gradon. He is neither round, nor a girl. What he IS… is awesome.

He convinced me over time that he wasn’t like anyone else I’d ever been involved with (or thought about getting involved with.) He saw me not as a body, but as a whole person… a person he really, really cared about.

So I made the leap. I went there. I don’t know how to explain how much of a risk that was for me… and I also don’t know how to explain how tremendously that risk was rewarded within an hour of arriving at Logan Airport in Boston.

See, we were comfortable in mere moments. Not just comfortable like you might be with an affable stranger in a lineup at a grocery store, but comfortable like I’d known him for years.

Comfortable like the sun hitting your face on the first day Spring really feels like Spring and you remember what warm is again.

Comfortable like the chair your grandpa always sat in that swallowed you up in worn cushions and the smell of Old Spice.

Comfortable like the conversations you have with old friends that need no preamble — they just continue where you left off.

Comfortable like the softest sweater you own that has holes and snags… but there’s no way you’re letting it go.

But let me tell you why it was so comfortable.

Gradon is the kind of peaceful, gentle, gracious person who is so easy to be around, and so easy to talk to that you’re absolutely free to be yourself when he is nearby. He’s funny and goofy in a way that inspires everything from grins to all-out asthmatic laughing breakdowns. You can guess how much I love that.

He’s brilliant and inquisitive and full of ideas and information and trivia that bubbles up out of him without warning — but always manages to be completely interesting and engaging. Really. He’s honestly one of the most interesting — and interestED — people I’ve ever met. He listens as much as, or more than he talks, too, so you feel like you can tell him anything at all… and he’ll care.

He loves — just like me — design and music and art and music and fashion and music and food and music… and did I mention he loves music? He has a soundtrack for everything in his head… again, just like me. We might not love the same exact styles and genres, but we intersect enough that we won’t lack things to listen to together for a very long time.

He has a giant heart that makes him incredibly accepting of people around him, and motivated to make a difference in their lives. He could easily have allowed some childhood difficulties he faced to warp that heart… but instead, he chose kindness and openness.

Finally? He’s hot. Seriously cute. Fiercely cute. And well-dressed. And he smells good. Okay, okay… stay with me, here. I’ll stop gushing sometime in the next few years.

What REALLY made me comfortable though, is that Gradon accepted me from the moment he saw me with open arms and a smile. He told me without reservation or hesitation that I was beautiful. He believes I am brilliant and talented, too, which doesn’t hurt.

Hearing those things from someone I adore has changed me, practically overnight.

My friends and family have been filling me with those words for years now, but they’ve always had an uphill battle when it comes to counteracting what I’d dealt with on the romantic side of things. I know that my parents have been frustrated for years that I was a sort of Idiot Magnet ™ for men who lacked the capacity to love and accept things outside of their ideals.

But now I’ve found someone who believes I AM that ideal. Not a compromise. Not a letdown. Not a disappointment.

Just Meg.

And in return, I get the honor of returning that same deliriously good feeling back in his direction.

There are plans and parent visits (and parental approval processes!) and more details than you can shake a stick at that will be required to make this work. It’s already working, mind you, but I would love to see us go the distance. And I wouldn’t write about this here if I didn’t think that was possible.

I know people think I’ll talk about any old thing online, but my privacy levels are actually much, much higher than you’d imagine.

But I had to tell you about this.

Read what I wrote almost three years ago. You’ll understand what’s inside of me right now.

So to you, Gradon, thanks for being you and thanks for being with me, even from afar.

I’m very, very, very blessed.