I started talking to Laurin on March 24, 2015, after finding her on the dating website Plenty of Fish. She had a picture on there where she was wearing pink boxing gloves, and was bald from her first bout with cancer. I initially scrolled past her, but kept coming back to her. I was amazed at her bravery to put herself out there like that, and after a little while, decided to send her a message. We chatted throughout the day and that evening decided to talk on the phone – which went on for about 3 hours. I am not a person who normally likes to spend much time on the phone, but the conversation was so natural, we just kept talking.
We met the next day at Starbucks downtown after work. I had dinner plans with some out of town friends later that night, so it was a very convenient place and she only lived a few minutes away. I buzzed my head that day so my hair would be shorter than hers, and we walked to a nearby bench where we talked for about an hour and a half. I explained I was recently legally separated and waiting for the necessary time required for my divorce to become finalized, and she told me about her cancer journey and how she was recovering. We decided we could either each go through our [crap] on our own, or together. I felt an incredible connection with her from that day – we seemed aligned in our values and life goals, and I left excited to get to know her better. When I walked her back to her car, I decided to be a gentleman and not go for a kiss the first night, which later I found out she took as me not being interested in her.
She was moving in with her sister 2 days later as she was going to be spending some time at Duke for radiation coming up, so she said she would not be able to see me for a few days. On the day she was supposed to move, something came up and her sister was unable to bring her large SUV to help her move, and Laurin was telling me it was going to take her a ton of trips to get everything in her little car. I replied, ‘I have a large truck…’ She argued with me for a while and then finally decided to let me come help. We were able to get almost everything in one trip. When I arrived at her house, she pushed me against the wall for our first kiss to thank me. After loading everything up, we headed to her sister’s house. When we arrived, I was fairly unpleasantly greeted by the family being the random guy showing up with her uninvited. But we moved everything in and went out to dinner. I brought Laurin over to show her my house.
