Last year, I went to visit James in Tulsa the second weekend in June. Our communication over the years has been spotty but consistently present. But the weeks leading up to my seeing him had me concerned about him. And I was heart-deep in nearly a full year of heartbreak; I needed to get out of town and reconnect with an old friend.
After that weekend, James contacted me and requested one more visit before I moved to Austin. He came to see me and also interviewed for jobs in Dallas while he was in Sherman. After having spent the better part of a week together, getting reacquainted, we realized that we were becoming pretty special to each other.
When James got home from that trip, we were chatting online and I mentioned that it'd be funny to change our Facebook statuses; James was game. And that was June 24, 2012.
It's been an eventful year!
Since the last time our Earth was in this position relative to the sun, James and I have become best friends. We have fallen in love. We have shared stories, and laughed a whole lot, and cried a little.
We have wrestled with setting boundaries for a relationship with a person who was coming from a completely different mindset. Stunned, I have said, at least twice, "If this is the reality, then we need to break this off right now." James has sat in Dallas traffic the morning after one of "those" talks and asked himself, "Do I really want to be involved with someone who has this many needs?" We have compromised and found common ground, and gained more in the process than either of us had ever imagined.
We have cooked together, and learned together, and made cheese and made a home. We have moved James twice (including once in August with just the two of us!) and me once. We have maintained a long-distance relationship.
We have faced down scars together, and carried each other's baggage, and jettisoned some of those bags over a cliff.
We have explored Deep Ellum together, and have become enamored with Austin together. I have met some of James' family and have become reacquainted with others. James has seamlessly become a part of my Texas family. I have met James' friends, and he has met mine; we have developed new mutual friends, and have reconnected with old high school buddies. We have visited the Texas coast, and another country, and a couple of Buc-ees.
We planned the simplest and most fun wedding ever, we got married, and long before that, we were a family. We merged households. James bought fully into parenting, and we are partners in home and family management. We know our strengths, we contribute as well as we can, and we forgive each other's foibles. We made a baby together, and we lost that baby. We have seen each other healthy and happy, and we have trudged through each other's injuries and illnesses.
We are for each other. We are for us. We have come a long way in a year, and I am extremely grateful that I have every year for the rest of my life to live with this man. I love him dearly, I respect him completely, and I am over-the-moon happy that I get to be with my best friend every single day.
Happy silly little anniversary, James.
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| Alec Hilliard Photography |
*sniff*, *sniff*...I love you so much!
ReplyDeleteStupid blogger doesn't recognize me.
I recognize you, baby. ;)
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