Have you ever thought much about love? You may not if you’re not in love with someone, but even then you still have an idea of what it feels like, or will be for you. Isn’t it crazy how weird love can be? As some of you may know, I am engaged to be married. I’ve known my fiancé for 11 years, but we’ve only ACTUALLY been together for three of the years I’ve known him. Partly because I can be an idiot, but the other part of what took me so long to realize Zac Moeller was, and is, the love of my life, is the unpredictability of love.

Now, even though we tend to stereotype men as not knowing what they have, even if it’s right in front of them (proven by movies like “Friends with Benefits,” of course), believe it or not, Zac knew it was me the minute he saw me. Yes, if you do the math, I am currently 22, so when we first met I was about 11 and Zac was only 16.

He was just starting to really understand what feelings like “love” were, and I was still a semi-oblivious girl. Yet I managed to stay fairly oblivious, even when I was old enough to understand “love” myself and started to try to find it with all the wrong people.

It took me eight years to finally see what was in front of me. Eight years. In the meantime, Zac pined after me and patiently waited. He got me a huge chocolate bar once and left it on my parents porch for me to find. We went to a movie together, a concert together and went camping with our families together. For goodness’ sake, I even told him that I saw him as such a good friend—that he was like the older brother I always wanted, and he still waited for me.

I wore the biggest “dumbass” sign you can imagine for the longest time because, there I was, dating ass****s who cheated on me, or gave up on me when I needed their support the most. A man who worked his butt off, helped my dad with the farm and was kind, supportive and I knew just wanted a chance with me, was sitting on the sidelines the entire time.

Zac, of course, dated too during that time. I obviously had benched him, so I guess you could say he tried to find other options. But we all know that a lot of the time, a man who is willing to do anything for a girl and has a kind heart has to find the right girl who won’t step all over him.

Unfortunately, yet thankfully for me, he didn’t find that girl. That poor guy got his heart ripped out of his chest, shredded and handed back to him on a few occasions. He was continually beaten down. He was a malnourished mess who was deep in debt when I got there. I wasn’t any better, but, that fickle thing “love,” once I finally gave in to what Zac and I obviously had, didn’t take long to bandage each other and the wounds to heal. It was so natural! We both had finally found the puzzle piece we needed.

I slightly regret waiting so long. Sometimes you can tell we’re both still damaged from what we’ve been through. But waiting also gave me and Zac experiences that we don’t know whether we might have needed in order to know for sure that we were meant for each other. It’s hard to say.

What I know for sure is that I have a good man now. One who treats me right, makes me extremely happy and doesn’t take advantage of my kind and honest heart.

This isn’t a shout-out to others out there who have been friends with someone for a long time and may or may not be denying feelings for that person. This is just an appreciation for that crazy bastard “love,” and I don’t want to imagine a world without it.