Sometime recently or in the near future we hit our seven year mark. Thanksgiving is late and Hanukkah is early and with all these shifts in cultural landmarks, I'm not exactly sure which day gets the honor of our forgetfulness but I know it's not the Saturday after Thanksgiving this year because I KNOW we got married in November. I'm not sure about much, but that I am positive about.
Year 7 has been another one of incredible change. And uncertainty. And adventure. We started this year with a magical trip to Hawaii to see some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen and we're ending it just up the hill from the beach in an LA apartment you scored online. Last December we had no clue where we were going – we were in Hawaii for you to do a residency interview – but now, a year later, we're settled in a new home 2,114 miles from our last and rebuilding a new life once again.
I've relied on you a lot since we've moved. I'm plagued with a bizarre shyness that keeps me from taking any initiative when it comes to meeting new people, so you have had to be my only friend and my portal to a social life. Back in Kentucky, I had a dozen people I truly adore to hang out with on a whim. Now I only have you when you're not working.
I'm sure you wanted to kill me some of those days off when all you wanted to do was lay around and play video games and I was desperate to get out of the house so I dragged you with me. I appreciate your restraint and your willingness to entertain me. If I wasn't also blessed with a bizarrely positive outlook, I probably would be in a state of depression that needs a few weeks of in-patient treatment, but those little escapes spent driving up the coast or walking along the beach with you were just what I needed to keep a smile on my face and maintain the faith that things would fall into place.
Well, those escapes and your money. Thank god I start working on Monday, right?
As tough as they are, I'm so grateful that we are given these mini challenges in life. If everything was rainbows and unicorns, we'd never have to prove ourselves to one another, we'd never know what unconditional love feels like, we'd never get to learn that being married is a decision that you make and not a emotion that you share.
And I wouldn't have discovered that the easiest way to keep you happy is to make you a sandwich.
There's this photo series going around by a guy who documented his wife's battle with breast cancer, and I showed you one of the pictures of her nearly dead and asked if you'd still lay by me if I was that sick. You did not hesitate for a second when you said yes. I know you like me best when my hair isn't crazy and my clothes aren't pajamas and my butt doesn't droop, but to know you'd love me and hold me if I was destroyed by disease and barely recognizable makes the thought of dying okay because it means I got the best of what there is in life.
(Not that I want to die or am close to it [fingers crossed]. You hear me, Universe? No dying or disease for at least another 35 years, okay? Thanks.)
I know we're going to grow old together because it's already happening. Yesterday when we were sitting on the couch before jiu jitsu having an impromptu staring contest that escalated from a side glance to a giggle fest to the slinging of middle school insults, I was struck by the thought that you're 50% grey now, maybe more. After jiu jitsu, you went to the drug store and came back with Aleve, Tiger Balm, Tums, and Muscle Milk. An hour later, we were both too sore to stand up and agreed that the best description for our broken legs was a 900-pound dead anaconda attached to our torso. If growing old with you is this full of funny, I'm in for life.
I absolutely love you more at this stage of our relationship than I ever have. You remain the smartest, funniest, most handsome, most talented, and most skilled man I've ever met, qualities that make tolerating your gloominess and moodiness possible. I never regret making the decision to marry you, not even when I move into the other bedroom so I don't smother you in your sleep.
This year has been a bad one for matrimony in our circle of friends and family, and I get it. People become as familiar as wallpaper and end up just as exciting. It's hard to find someone sexy when you know what their shit smells like. Little annoying habits go from endearing to the straw that breaks the camel's back. Divorce, as you know, is my family's tradition, and it's one we're keeping strong. But as we sit on the periphery of marriages that crumble into heaps of garbage, I appreciate what ours is all the more: co-dependent and rooted in selfishness. And I am so glad we never had kids.
The seventh year is the year of copper and wool. Copper is for good fortune and prosperity, which might actually come to us this year now that we're both gainfully employed, and wool is for the comfort, security, and warmth that being married this long brings. There is no question that you are my comfort, my security, and my warmth. Sometimes being married to you is oppressively suffocating, but most of the time it's the thing the breathes life into my existence. Thank you for that.
Love,
Amber
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