What “I Do” Actually Looks Like

Today is our 9 year anniversary.

I just got back from a last minute and somewhat urgent doctors appointment,  I’m sitting here in my crazy cluttered house, still un-showered, super tired from waking up more than usual last night and typing this out while actually on hold with the insurance company to make sure our coverage does indeed start in August.  B is of course at work, I didn’t see him before he left this morning–thankfully I slept through him getting ready–and he’ll probably be home sometime after dinner and maybe after the baby goes to bed.  Also it’s Monday.

This is the reality of today and our 9 year anniversary.  Glamorous isn’t it?

For a few minutes I thought that I should try to find a pretty wedding photo and throw up a quick post about how amazing everything is, I can’t believe it’s been 9 years and I’d do it all again yada, yada, yada.  Then I said, screw it…lets talk about the truth.

The truth?  It is amazing and I would do it all again, but not for the same reasons I agreed to 9 years ago.

9 year ago we said I do and it’s funny because I don’t think I’ve ever agreed to so much with so little information up front.  When I said I do I had no idea I was also saying I do to Texas, Ohio, postpartum depression, fussy babies, limb differences, g-tubes, doctors appointment after doctors appointment, power chairs, broken sleep patterns, throw up, spit up, and poop.  I was saying I do to us and love and the excitement that had brought us to that point.  I didn’t know I was also saying I do to anger, frustration, and weaknesses hidden so deep inside us both that only the challenges of marriage and children would be able to crack through our carefully constructed but ultimately defective facades exposing our inner demons and finally allowing them the oxygen they need to breathe and hopefully grow into the beautiful white stallions it’s possible for them to be.  Weaknesses can do that you know.  (At least according to my friend Jack.)  

This is not AT ALL what I signed up for.  I signed up for the glossy magazine photos and yes I knew there would be tough times, but only a certain kind of tough I was positive I could handle.  You know like when models have to scream, but they still look pretty doing it?  Yeah, that’s what I wanted a pretty kind of tough.

But this is better.  Not that I always feel that way, but it is.  It’s a better life than I could have imagined, and it has come about in ways that I wouldn’t have necessarily chosen.  It’s better because what I used to want was stagnate, simple and shallow.  Love as I understood it then didn’t have a lot of depth to it and it certainly didn’t ask a lot of me.  I said ‘I do’ for selfish reasons (and I almost didn’t say ‘I do’ for selfish reasons), but I’m so thankful I did because I know I’m a much better person for it.  And B, I think you are too.

And while I’m being honest, we’ve had some amazing, kick-a adventures that have left us giddy, joyful, excited and laughing until our necks fail.  Cuz that is the truth too.  It has been fun, we do laugh a lot and our family of 5 is off-the-charts amaze balls.

And while we’re sorta in the middle of some rocky waters I can say this for sure:
B, I like us now, a thousand times more than I like us then.  And that’s saying something.

Happy Anniversary B.
We’re on a roller coaster that only goes up my friend.