Eleven years in the books. Somehow it feels like the blink of an eye but it's not because wrinkles are taking over our faces. Mine more than yours, which is a real asshole thing to do to a woman.
This past year has been one of constant change, all for the better. We got settled in our new house. You finished residency and started being a legit doctor. I got trained on being a radio nurse, finished nursing school again, and decided to raise chickens. We watched Mateo and Beatrix learn to climb stairs. Everything was going so crazy this summer that I looked at you and said, "NO MORE CHANGES." Life was happening too fast, and even for a child of divorce, adjusting to that much change, good or bad, was getting to be too much. I think you respected my no change mandate for about three days.
That is how things are between us. I'm like a giant boulder in the middle of your lake of frenzy, taking the whitewater and making a little circle of calm out of it. You are the powerboat with the jet engine going a trillion miles an hour and setting goals like "make $20 million." My goal is "don't get fat."
How did we end up together? How have we stayed together? How do I still like you so much?
Maybe it's the joy that comes with your morning jammie pants concerts, where you play the piano and wail random songs like The Who's "Athena" and Queen's "You're My Best Friend" and I declare them to be about me. Maybe it's the FaceTime chats where you call me after a 16-hour shift and pretend you're in a coffin and then make funny faces like a toddler. Maybe it's our stubbornness coupled with the ongoing battles to see who will get out of bed first and who will make the coffee. Maybe it's the Bitcoin. Yeah, it's probably the Bitcoin.
When I used to imagine what being married was like, I thought it would be romantic and sexy and loving. It's actually a lot of comfortable pants, smudged mascara, and bad breath. It's someone to eat meals with, someone who makes sure you didn't die when you were hanging a door by yourself, someone to warm the bed up at night. It's the right to shove a smart phone or a 10-pound internal medicine book out of the way to get attention. It's a series of contracts where I say, "Need more hugs," and you say, "Get a life." It's tolerance and forgetfulness. It helps to have a little mental illness, and abandonment issues, too.
It's not easy being married. Our co-dependence makes me subject to some of the deepest loneliness I've ever felt. It makes me accept being treated like a servant. It makes me chronically obligated to you so much so that I don't invest in friendships. It makes me have dreams that you're cheating on me with some blonde chick with a bob haircut. When you're away at work and I'm home doing life without you, the void is so much it's like only taking half breaths. I never wanted to feel this vulnerable, but without it, I don't think we would have this miracle of a thing that's between us. No, it's not beautiful -- often times it's downright ugly -- but it is extraordinary and magical. Okay, it's also a little sick.
The eleventh anniversary gift is steel. Seems callous and abrasive, but I get it. A marriage that long can be cold, but it can also withstand immense heat. It is strong, strong enough to bridge huge expanses of space without extra support. It can be repaired with welds. If you want something to last, to survive powerful blows and unrelenting pressure and heated emotions and all the elements that are inherent in relationships, make it out of steel.
To know that you are there, that you will know when I'm seriously in need and not just being needy, that you will share with me everything in life... there has never been anyone in my life so dependable and reliable and constant. I am so grateful to you for that.
Happy anniversary. And remember, hodl.
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