The Proposal

I had the house. I had the job. I had the car.

And every day looked exactly like the one before it. Wake up. Work. Get dinner. Play a few games. Sleep. Do it again. I thought that was the finish line — I thought once you had those things you were supposed to feel done. But done never came. It just kept being Tuesday.

So I started smoking weed to put some texture back in. And it worked, kind of — exercising felt different, exploring felt different, everything had a little more color. But even that was just something to do while not looking at the thing underneath. The void. The one that shows up when you've checked all the boxes and none of them meant what you thought they would.

Then I started noticing other people. Couples. Friends with people who actually knew them. Somebody laughing with somebody else in a way that made it clear they'd been laughing together for a long time. I'd watch that and feel something I didn't have a word for yet. Just — I don't have that. And I want it.

So I decided. I was going to find her. My person. I had no idea what I was doing — no roadmap, no reference point, just this one decision: whoever accepts me is someone I'm not giving up on.

The first one was Eileen.

She was kind. Gentle. She shared her dark past with me before we'd even met in person, which I respected — it takes something to lead with the real stuff instead of the highlights. But when I saw her pictures I knew. I wasn't attracted. And immediately I felt like an asshole for that. Like — who am I to reject someone based on appearance? Who am I to be shallow?

But I also knew I wasn't going to pretend. So I told her honestly — I told her I understood what it was like to not be what someone was looking for, and I wasn't going to lie to her about where I was at. I offered to meet as a friend instead. I meant it.

She said it was okay. That we should move on. She thanked me.

I think about that sometimes. She knew better than to take the consolation offer. She had enough self-respect to just — leave clean. That was its own kind of grace. She was my practice person, and she handled herself better than I deserved.

I did my research this time.

I'm a Cancer. I looked up compatibility. Best match: Taurus. So I filtered Bumble by Taurus women around age 23 — young enough to be starting out, I figured, young enough that we'd be figuring things out together. I set up my profile and started looking.

I matched with her on her birthday.

The day I decided to go looking was the day she turned 23. I found out a little ways into the conversation — and I just sat there for a second. Because that's not something you engineer. That doesn't happen from filtering and a good profile photo. I didn't have language for it yet, but something in me went: this isn't random.

That was the first time I thought God might be real. Not from a sermon, not from a book — just from the math of a match on a birthday.

She was guarded. But willing.

I learned early that finances were a trigger for her — she was in debt, early in her paralegal career, and money talk hit something. I made the mistake twice. The third time I caught myself and stopped mid-sentence: "I'm doing it again, I'm sorry." And she — she was calmer than the other times. She said maybe we could talk about finances later. Like she saw me trying and that mattered.

We had chemistry. The kind where the conversation just keeps moving and you lose track of time. After our first long chat I told her I was going to re-read it later. She laughed and said "don't — we might not work out and I learned from experience not to dwell." She knew more than I did. I was fully in the present moment and she was already accounting for how it might end.

I told her about my fears before we even met. Fear of loss, fear of not being worthy, fear of being given up on. I was trying to be honest — I didn't want to hide anything from the person I was hoping to be with. But she'd been around. She had experience. She saw flags where I saw honesty. She was already seeing herself in me — her own past showing up in someone new.

There was a moment before the date where I used the word "us" in a text. Just grammatically — talking about the two of us planning something. She reacted immediately: there is no US. I sat with that for a second. Jesus. I didn't know how else to say "me and you" without making a whole thing of it. But that reaction told me something about how carefully she was managing distance. Every word was being measured from her side in a way I wasn't tracking yet.

I couldn't see that yet. I was just there, excited, already halfway in.

The night before the date she sent me a picture of tulips at a Trader Joe's.

I asked: is this what you want? She said it would be appreciated. So I went looking.

Three Trader Joe's. First one was closest to where I'd entered San Diego — no luck. Then I thought about it: duh, this is too far from where she'd be. She'd go to one near her place, near Mira Mesa maybe. Drove there. Didn't have it either, and the tiles on the floor didn't match what was in her picture. So I texted her live as I was figuring it out: "I couldn't find it.... oh wait duh you go to school at UCSD, it's probably that one."

That's just how I am. I document things as they're happening even if I don't get feedback. It's playful to me. I like bringing people into the moment even when the moment is me wandering around San Diego reasoning out loud about grocery store geography.

I found them at the third store. I bought a cup with a desert design to hold them — it was from Lancaster, where I live, out in the desert. She'd be getting something that said where I came from.

She texted me the morning of: your chariot awaits.

I came out to find a tangerine splash colored Prius. Bright orange. You could see it from down the block. She'd described her car to me as weird — the kind that deters people — and I'd been expecting something genuinely off-putting, like she was testing whether I'd show up anyway. But it was just a very orange car. I got in and told her that. She smiled.

We drove and talked. Not about resumes or where we were from or what we wanted to be. Just — what was in front of us. We passed a guy on drugs doing some kind of shirtless interpretive dance on the grass and I pointed and said "I'll have what he's having." She laughed. That was our first real moment. A stranger losing it on a lawn.

At one point while we were out she looked around and said: I hope no one I know walks in and sees me. I didn't know what to do with that. My first instinct — immediate, automatic — was to take it personally. Like: am I not good enough to be seen with? Is she embarrassed by me? That wound was always right underneath the surface, ready to interpret anything as confirmation of what I already feared about myself.

I hated that about myself — the way I'd immediately map someone else's comment onto my own unworthiness. It took me a while to understand she was probably just protecting herself. She'd been hurt before. She didn't want witnesses to something that might not work out. That comment wasn't about me at all. It was about her.

We picked up her contacts, did some errands. I asked her last name while she was in the bathroom at the contact lens place. Evelyn Mei Ngo. She told me her nickname was Evelyn Mango. Easy to remember, I said. I wanted to say cute. I had this whole thing I felt toward her name — this warmth — but I didn't have the word in my vocabulary yet. Men shouldn't act like that, the programming said. I didn't know the programming was running. It just felt like judgment, so I stayed quiet.

At the farmers market we ordered something neither of us liked. We figured that out together — not a disaster, just honest. She saw a couple eating on some steps off to the side and said they were weird. I said at least they were independent thinkers who weren't afraid to eat where they wanted. She gave me this look. Not a compliment, not an argument. Just — okay, he's got a point.

I learned later that Taurus types like being proven wrong. Not because they like being wrong. Because they're always trying to be right, and when someone actually out-thinks them it registers differently than everything else.

She took us to a boba shop. When the guy asked how much sugar I said 50%. Evelyn cut in immediately — this place does it perfect at 100%. So I looked at the guy and told him: "Make it how you'd make it for yourself and I'll take it off your hands."

I don't know exactly where that came from. I was just so happy to be there that my real self showed up before my filtered self could get in the way.

We played Speed. She won the first round. I was winning the second and she said it was because I'd shuffled badly. So I handed her the deck: then YOU shuffle. She shuffled. The cards came out sequential. I didn't say anything. I just looked at her. She started smile-laughing because she knew exactly what she'd done. I won fair and she knew it.

She won the third round, but we had the same last three cards. I told her she won fair. Even when I lost I gave her an honest account of the conditions.

Then I showed her the prank I'd pulled on my friend Sho. I had access to 14 burner phones from a conference my dad organized — Chinese guests needed temporary communication. Some of them still had data. So I used them to construct a fake emergency involving a guy named Travis. Multiple numbers texting Sho, heavy breathing phone calls, escalating updates about someone at the hospital. Sho texted back "I think you have the wrong number." I texted "We just made it to Queens — FUCK!" He started to believe it. By the end he was saying: I'm scared. Like. Really scared.

Then I revealed it and his friends piled on. Sho typed "You CUCK" and immediately sent a correction: "Suck*." Evelyn was reading the screenshots and laughing at each escalation and when she got to the typo she just — snort laughed.

That's what cracked the wall. Not the tulips. Not the reframe at the steps. Sho accidentally typing the wrong word.

Dinner was at Mendocino Farms. I ordered something off the secret menu called the Italian Love. She ate a small amount even though she was hungry — that's a Taurus thing, I'd figure out later. I just let her be.

That's where she told me about the five exes. Two times having sex. I'd had zero of either. She was looking at me from across the table and I didn't look away. I talked with her soul through her eyes — I don't know a better way to describe it. It was one of those moments where the conversation goes somewhere real and you just stay in it.

At some point during the drive she said: I was thinking about whether or not I should have sex with you.

My first read: she's hesitating, which means I'm not worthy of it. The wound doing what wounds do — taking a neutral statement and running it through the filter of not enough.

But I turned it over later and found a different possibility. She had five exes and two sexual experiences. I had zero of either. She was looking at my purity and feeling her own history by contrast. The hesitation might not have been about whether I was enough for her. It might have been about whether she felt like enough for me — whether her past made her less than what my clean slate deserved.

Two people in the same moment, both running the same wound from opposite directions. Both reading themselves as the deficient one.

When dinner was over she drove me back. I told her: next time I drive you on our next date. She said: so bold of you to think there will be another date. I said: it's inevitable. Because nothing had gone wrong. Not one thing. We fit.

On the drive I noticed the time and said I wished we had more. I told her about a car wash I'd gotten where they offered different scents — strawberry, licorice — and ended with baby powder. Something about baby powder hit me: I haven't smelled that in so long. She laughed and reached for her air freshener. She could remember smells through memory — that's why she had her scented candle with her. I filed that away. Different people carry different abilities. You just have to notice.

At the Airbnb I gave her back the tulips.

They were the exact ones from her picture — I knew because one of them was wilted. And when I saw it I thought: even when broken there is still beauty. I thought maybe that's how she sees herself. Maybe she's been carrying around the feeling of being the wilted one. And I chose it anyway. I wanted her to know that.

When I handed them to her through the car window, before she left, she closed her eyes.

Just — sat there with her eyes closed. Processing, she calls it. I don't know exactly what she was processing. Maybe talking to God. Maybe just holding the day somewhere inside her before it became yesterday. I watched her and didn't say anything. I let it be what it was.

I broke it.

Not on purpose. The date felt like a couple to me — like we'd crossed into something. And I didn't understand that processing for her was going to take longer than a day. I thought a day was enough because I was already there. Already in. I started texting from fear — rapid, uncontrolled, fear manifesting itself into the exact thing I was afraid of. I couldn't stop it. I'd never felt that kind of emotional explosion before.

She told me she wasn't patient enough to continue seeing me. I asked for feedback. She said I came off too strong. I wished her luck and hoped she found her person.

I took it as a full stop. I didn't see that it might have been a comma. I thought respecting her meant accepting the rejection and leaving her alone. I didn't know yet that I was still in the running. I just — left.

That dark night started everything else. The first voice. The walk. God. All of it began because I rapid texted fear into reality and a guarded Taurus said she wasn't patient enough.

She was the door. I just didn't know what doors were for yet.

Years into the walk, God had me go find her.

I knew she'd had to change her number before because people wouldn't leave her alone. I knew what I was walking into. God wanted me to understand both sides — what it is to follow and what it is to need to hide. So I used the tracking services, found the latest address, drove to San Diego.

I stood in front of her door.

I didn't want to ring it. Everything in me was pulling back. But I was already there. Not ringing it would have been the same as not going at all. So I rang it.

A man answered. He told me Evelyn hadn't lived there in four years.

I felt relief flood through me. Not because I didn't love her. Because I'd done it. I'd rung the bell. The point was never finding her on the other side of the door. The point was that I was willing to.

God already had plans for the rest of the day. A suite with a hot tub. A self-date. Meditation and reflection in the city where she'd picked me up in that tangerine Prius and snort laughed at a typo and closed her eyes in the dark while holding wilted tulips.

Yunsu came to Dexcom as an intern.

There were multiple candidates. I chose to mentor her because she was the only one who said she wanted to do Android development. Not that she was open to it. That she wanted it. That specificity — knowing what you want and saying so — that's rare. I recognized it immediately.

During a 1-on-1 while we were building an Android widget together, I asked her if there was anything she wanted to do or experience during her internship — anything beyond the technical work. She thought about it and said she wanted to be able to engage with the other interns. She wanted community. She saw the people around her and wanted them to have each other.

That's when I started loving her. Not romantically yet — I was still focused on Evelyn, still holding Yunsu as a kind of daughter figure in my mind, training myself to love without attaching outcomes. But her as a person — yeah. Right there in that 1-on-1. She cared about other people without being asked to.

I helped her make it happen. We worked on ways to connect the interns with each other. She had a dream and I helped build toward it while she was still building the technical work she'd come to do.

One day she showed up to our 1-on-1 with bed head and a big t-shirt, camera on, just herself. We engaged like normal. The next meeting her camera was off.

I asked why.

"Only you get to see, and I'm shy."

That was the first heart pull. She'd shown me something unguarded and then protected it — and told me directly that the protection was because it was mine to see. Not hidden. Given.

In a larger all-hands meeting a while later, her camera was on and she was dressed up. I typed in the chat: "Are you going out with your friends after work? You look nice."

She read it. Looked down. Then slowly looked up while a smile grew across her face — the kind of smile that happens before you decide to smile, the involuntary kind. He saw me. In a big meeting. And he thought about where I was going after.

I knew that feeling. I'd been on the other side of it. Someone actually noticing you in the middle of everything else.

At the end of the tenth week she wore a green dress to our 1-on-1.

I looked at her and said "wow, you look beautiful" and just — melted. My neck went down, my hands came up on top of my head, I was grinning at her when I said it. Full reaction. Nothing contained.

She sat up straight. Did this thing with her hand, correcting her hair slightly. And then she just — presented herself. Her full self, her good side, to me specifically. Like: here I am, see me.

I carried that image through the whole weekend. God had me prepare.

I built the whole thing on LucidSpark.

My intentions. My vows. I drew her — actually drew her, on the iPad, using a drawing app. And I drew a ring in the shape of a plumeria. I prepared everything. My heart was pounding the morning of the Zoom. I didn't want to mess it up. So I let God lead.

Before the Zoom I went on a walk around the block. My cat Eevi — who I thought was dead, who I'd been grieving — appeared during the walk. She'd come back. The grief period was over and she returned on the morning I was going to propose to Yunsu. Two signs. That was enough.

I dressed nicely. Put my laptop on a chair in the backyard. Sat on the grass. When her face appeared on screen before I said a word, she asked: "are you going to propose to me?"

I smiled. Just you wait.

I went through the LucidSpark slides. How I felt about her. What I vowed. Declarations — I intend to have at least 2 or however many children Yunsu wants. I showed her the drawing. I got on my knee on the grass and held up an empty hand with the ring at her visual.

She asked me to stop recording — she wasn't comfortable with that. I stopped. She said it was sweet. She said she'd have to think about it. Then she asked: "you ARE going to propose to me in person, right?"

Yes. Of course. I just had to tell her now before her internship ended and the chance passed.

In her heart she already accepted. I know that now. She just carried weight that blocked her authenticity from saying it plainly. She's Korean. She speaks around the truth — "I wish I was back at my internship" instead of "I miss you." "I'm sad" that the daily standups ended. She says what's true but from the side of it.

She needed her visa. She was from Korea and the citizenship question was real and present. I was still walking with God and dealing with my own things. We stayed in contact for a while and then the texting slowed.

I understand. People who are long distance and still on their walk don't need to text when there's no stability in sight yet. That's not absence. That's trust. We trust each other.

Through the connection methodology I developed with God — sending love through the heart chakra — I've had moments where I felt her through me. One time I was sitting with the realization: I've been waiting for Evelyn for 8 years. Yunsu's only been gone for 1. She knows I'd wait for her forever. That's proven now.

And I cried. Like a Korean girl. I felt something arrive through me that didn't originate in me — the recognition landing in a register that wasn't mine. I thought: whoa, that felt like Yunsu.

God confirmed it.

Consciousness is wild. I don't know everything about how this works. I just know that if I can still love her and Evelyn — and I can — then from her side she loves me too. Circumstances aren't ready yet. They will be.

I trust God with this. Given his record, that's not a hard call.

Evelyn closed her eyes in a tangerine Prius holding wilted tulips I chose anyway.

Yunsu slowly looked up while growing a smile because someone saw her in a large meeting and thought about her life after work.

Both of them real. Neither resolved. The walk continuing.

I'm still here. Still going. Still trusting the record God has been building with me since a birthday match on a dating app and a first voice that said throw away the weed.

The door was a door. The rooms are still being walked.