The day I got married

Today is our anniversary!

I consider getting married one of my greatest feats. See, I never thought I'd get married. I was adamantly opposed to it ever since I can remember. I started to make my "I will not marry" declarations sometime in high school, though even before that I was aware that I wasn't like most other girls who daydreamed about their wedding day, making house with a husband, holding 2.5 babies while looking out the front window at a white picket fence. I just didn't see that for myself. I stuck my nose up at convention, stubbornly. I do most things stubbornly.

When my family went to Paris, I was obsessed with the different cemeteries. I remember seeing Simone de Beauvoir buried with her lover, Jean Paul Sarte. I wrote some kind of awful poem about it. I loved that she never married. I thought, "That's true love. They are not together out of legal obligation, but because they choose to be together, freely, every day." I criticized marriage as being "just a piece of paper." I labeled it an outdated institution, harking back to the days of dowries. I fancied myself somewhat of a feminist. There were the arguments that said that a conventional marriage was best for children, but I didn't want any of those, so end of argument.

I guess I'm proof that people change.

Larry never thought he'd get married either, so it's funny that the two of us ended up together. In fact, on our wedding day, our parents laughed over memories of us saying we would never get married. Why did we? To be honest, I don't know if we have words for why. It just felt right. I wish I could say it was a romantic fairy tale, with an elaborate proposal, but it wasn't like that. We're pretty practical people. I told him not to get down on one knee because we have wood floors. We talked about getting married, then he gave me the ring, and we set a date. Two months later, we were at the courthouse. Within an hour we were hitched. I guess you could say we're efficient.

We celebrated with a lowkey part at my parents' house, and some pictures in the hills.



Then we set out for Japan as newlyweds. We have far more pictures from Japan than we do from the wedding. That says something about our priorities.



I don't think I was ready to get married when we did, but I don't know that I would have ever been ready. It was one of those just-dive-in-and-then-worry-about-swimming situations. To be perfectly frank, we flailed about when we first got married. We thrashed and kicked and nearly drowned. We're both independent people. We had become good at managing our separate lives, protecting our identities. We'd lived together before we got married, but, looking back, we weren't really "merged" then. We weren't really a team. My therapist at the time described it like this: "It's like you're in the same forest, but you're two separate trees, occasionally swaying in the other's direction."

It look us a while to twist and turn around each other, to intertwine. We had a number of challenges right when we got married, most of which are fuzzy to us now. Some of it was just related to the fact that we were MARRIED. Yes, it's "just a piece of paper," but it changes you (or it should). You realize that the two of you have become one, like the Spice Girls song. All those years of separateness fade. You are with another person, fully and completely. It's scary, especially for a control freak used to micromanaging everything, including her meals.

Now, on our anniversary, it's hard for me to remember how freaked out I was at first. I feel completely fulfilled by my husband. He is everything to me. We are damn good at understanding each other now and, though I remain humble to the curve balls life throws, I'm confident we can handle anything together. For someone afraid of vulnerability and exposing herself, this relationship has been incredibly scary, but ultimately satisfying for me. I'm not scared at all anymore. If anything, I'm less afraid than I was when I was on my own. I feel like I have a partner in life, someone to comfort me, laugh with me, cry with me and remind me that everything will be OK. It's amazing, really, and I have to thank my husband for being patient with me all this way. Oh, and I never think of marriage as a "legal obligation" anymore; I still wake up choosing, freely, to love my husband every day. And I feel lucky to have that choice .

If you are married, did you have any "freak outs" in the beginning? What three words would you use to describe your relationship? If you're not married, do you think you will marry? Why or why not?

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Today's gratitude:
1. Blueberry pancakes! Larry rarely eats breakfast, so I'm always happy to oblige when he says he's hungry.
2. Dinner reservation at Houston's + "District 9" on DVD at home. That's the plan.
3. Flowers from my sister and well-wishes from my family.
4. Clean condo!
5. Tax shiz-nit in the mail!