So we fell in love at the end of last year…

You could say that my dog introduced us on December 17. Given all that our two lives had been through over the past decade - all of the pain and suffering - it was quite fitting that such a sweet and loving creature would allow us to find each other on twitter.

To be honest, I had thought that she had a very pretty avatar, which is what had led me to her blog. It was there I learned that there was so much more behind her bright smile and lively eyes. There was pain and suffering, guilt, and strength. There was inspiration and thankfulness. So many of these things I could empathize with, and as I read on, anxious to find out what it was that had made her suffer, I found no answer and felt compelled to e-mail her and to send her to my Tumblr (specifically the entries tagged “quadriplegic”).

She e-mailed me back with the details, which I won’t go into here. I will just say that there was an event that happened to her a year before my accident that ground her life to a halt. It was completely different from my situation and something that, if given 100 attempts, you would never guess. But it was tragic and painful and something I wouldn’t trade my situation for.

We both instantly recognized a deep connection, and not that kind of BS e-Harmony connectedness where people carry on about being able to understand each other and so on. Our connection is born out of what we both have been through, the things that no one else could ever relate to the same way.

It is from out of that connection that our friendship quickly formed. From there, things progressed quickly, like so many relationships do, and we fell in love with each other. We share so many of the same interests, beliefs, and hopes for the future, but most importantly, we share something that connects us to the core. The more we talked about the circumstances in our lives, the more we found so many amazing parallels - our crawling back from what felt like a death of sorts, the reliance on our families for strength, the tragedies our parents had suffered through leading up to our tragedies. The list went on.

I don’t want you to think that that connection is the only thing that connects us by any means. She makes me laugh and makes me think, and the way we carry on together reminds me of William Powell and Myrna Loy from 1934’s “The Thin Man” (a reference I did not even have to explain to her). Despite geographic distance, technology has kept us very close together. We share our own private Tumblr, constantly MMS texts, pictures and videos throughout the day, video chat and, my favorite of all, leave our phones connected throughout the night, thanks to our unlimited mobile-to-mobile. Each night, we get into bed and just listen to each other talk or breathe until we fall asleep. One of us may wake in the middle of the night and wake up the other, and we’ll start talking again until we fall back asleep. In the morning, she usually gets out of bed first and gives me a wake-up call later on. It’s the closest I felt anyone before, and we’re hundreds of miles away.

In two weeks she’ll be flying to DC for five days. Neither of us can wait and we’re counting down the days. It is then, that we plan on officially going public to our tweeps.

Until then, I have to thank you all for being great friends and creating an atmosphere where I felt comfortable writing about my accident and recovery. After all, it was our writings that allowed us to understand each other before we’d ever begun talking. Also, I have a feeling that @nonlineardog is going to make sure I never forget who introduced us.

We’re both looking forward together - to a new year and a new decade. We both plan on making it ours.