On Sunday, I got engaged.

It’s still sinking in.

My boyfriend of over five-and-a-half years finally got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. And I said yes. Well, I sort of said yes.

A lot of people are asking me how it happened, so I thought I’d write a blog post. That way, if someone asks me what happened, I can send them a link to this post!

A few weeks ago, I had a mini meltdown. I was bored, and our weekends were boring. Something had changed, and it was frustrating. I told him I was bored, and we both decided to plan a drive somewhere. We got up, went to buy supplies for a picnic, and drove. He wanted to make it a surprise, which was wonderful, and I didn’t suspect anything because I had previously told him that I felt like I organised a lot of the things we do together.

It was raining. He had forgotten to bring the picnic blanket. I had an argument with my sister through text message. Things weren’t going well.

We arrived at Ku-ring-gai National Park, and set up our picnic. The women next to us seemed friendly, even asking us to take a photo of them. As we sat and enjoyed our picnic, things got a bit sombre. And by a bit, I mean a lot.
“I’m thinking about killing myself,” said one of the women. The other woman burst into tears and tried to convince the other not to. “There’d be such a void in so many people’s lives,” said the other woman. We looked at each other and packed up our picnic.

We got back in the car and drove to another section of the park. There were no other cars around. The air was still and silent. The Boyf apparently thought “I’m going to propose here”.

But before he could, a car drove up and stopped next to us. A woman got out of the car and proceeded to pee in front of us. We moved again.

We drove and drove around the park, with me not knowing why we couldn’t just go home. And then…The Boyf accidentally drove right out of the park. And wanted to drive an extra 30 minutes to get to a new entrance of it. By this time, I had given up on our picnic. What was meant to be a lovely day had turned into a day full of obstacles. We drove for 30 minutes, with me asking why we couldn’t go home, and with him insisting we go for a walk.

We went into the new entrance and drove. We saw a beautiful view and parked. We walked over to this spot on the side of the road in the park and looked at the view, taking photos. I then turned to him and pretended to propose (something I’m prone to doing as a joke).

“Robbie,” I began, “things are going really well for me at the moment. My job is great, you and I are great. There’s just one more thing…”
I was mimicking the speech he gave when he asked me out, over five-and-a-half years ago.

“Charlotte.”

“What?”

I turned around. He was on one knee. A ring in his hand. A car honked.

“Will you marry me?”

The first word out of my mouth was ‘no’, but not in the normal sense. More of the “wait, really?” kind of way.

Then, “of course I’ll fucking marry you!”

Finally, something in the day had gone right.