Fifteen Years

According to Google, the traditional gift is crystal.

Fifteen years ago, I was very young and even more naïve. I was young and in love, and what more was needed than that?

Looking back over the last fifteen years, I see how incomprehensibly stupid I was. I lacked the ability and the sense to make such a life-alteringly-important choice. I'm not sure that I even knew whether or not this choice I was making was the RIGHT choice. Statistically, getting married so young to someone I knew for such a short time would only end in disaster.

Yet here we are, fifteen years later, happier and more in love than we were when we made this rash, yet wonderful decision to join our lives together.

It took us a while to get used to each other. We hadn't known each other for long enough to know how the other would react in any given situation. But though sometimes difficult, this initial getting-to-know period was mostly fun and exciting. It was a rush. It was just a more intense continuation of the flirting and dating and infatuation stages that we had started not long before.

There were financial difficulties at times. We were poorer than dirt. We struggled, sometimes only being able to scrape together half a month's rent at a time. Student loans saved us from financial ruin, getting us by until I was finally making enough money to make ends meet. We received little or no help from family, because often, our families weren't doing a whole lot better than we were. We're in a comfortable position financially today, and the hard times helped us grow closer to each other. It feels good to be able to say that we've climbed to where we are financially on our own.

There were emotional difficulties at times. I'd be lying if I said that there aren't still emotional difficulties. After the initial rush wore off, we got down to the business of figuring out who "we" are. And every time we thought we had figured it out, something else happened that seemed to throw all that we thought we knew about "us" into disarray. Jobs were lost. First one child came, then another, each changing the dynamic of our little family. There were struggles with depression, wrestles with self-identity, and crises of faith. The "we" and "us" had to continue to evolve. Even recent life changes such as buying a new house (and leaving behind almost eight years of memories in the old house) have caused strains and have caused us to re-evaluate certain things in our lives.

Yet through it all, there has been a love that has continued to grow and deepen through fifteen years. The joys, the intimacy, the laughter, the challenges, the tears... ALL of this has helped forge a bond between us. It's this bond that has kept us together and has kept us communicating and loving and laughing and crying TOGETHER for fifteen years and will keep us doing the same for endless years to come.

Fifteen years.

High school "friends" told me it wouldn't last five years. I told them they'd be dead and gone before this relationship ended. So far, so good. We've survived things that have ruined other marriages - marriages of people that I know personally. We've not only survived, but triumphed over our challenges and have turned weaknesses into strengths. There's lots more to come. We'll have a teenager next year and who knows what challenges THAT will bring.

But because of the commitment we both have to each other, because of the way we continue to overcome problems and because of the relationship that continues to grow, evolve, and strengthen between us, I dont really worry that the "us" will ever cease to be.

I love her more than life.

I'm looking forward to what "we" will become in the future.