Do You Remember?

Yesterday my daughter was watching a show on TLC called, "Four Weddings."  Four brides compete with one another for the best wedding.  At the end, the one that gets the highest overall ratings wins a spectacular honeymoom for herself and her new husband.  I found myself glued to it even after she left to babysit for a neighbor.

It was interesting for me as I sat watching these blissful couples filled with love and joy.  I was suddenly transported back to my own wedding day.  To that moment when I stood just out of sight of the aisle in the church, on my dad's arm.  My heart was beating triple time, my palms were sweaty, I had butterflies in my stomach and a million doubts in my mind.  This was it.  For the rest of my life I was going to be with one man.  My destiny, my world was going to be forevermore intertwined with this person.  I was never again going to be free to make a decision for myself, about myself.  I was so young.  Was I too young?  Should I have shopped around a bit more?  Was there a better guy and I was missing him because I was taking myself off of the market too soon?

Then I turned into that aisle.  I saw my husband to be.  I saw his face full of emotion and his eyes tearing and every doubt I had vanished in that moment.  Every single thing on paper says I should not be with this man.  In so many ways we are so opposite and we shouldn't work.  Yet, deep in my soul, there was a feeling I can't describe.  I knew the day I was marrying him it was going to be hard.  We grew up very differently and I knew there were going to be kinks to work out but deep inside, where it matters, he was my missing puzzle piece.  In all of the big ways we were exactly the same.

We both love to laugh.  We have literally cracked each other up since the day we met.  I think that was the hardest part of the tumultuous times we have recently experienced, the laughter was missing.  It's hard to laugh when you can't pay your bills and you are not intimate and every day has become another chore to get through.  There was nothing funny about our life.  I have often said to my husband that we could never be with other partners because they would think we are nuts, not funny.  We launch into crazy voices, sing at the top of our lungs, do crazy dances while cooking dinner.  I often think our kids will be so immune to anything as adults, there isn't a whole lot of crazy they haven't experienced.

We are so compassionate.  If there is a one-eyed, three-limbed, flea-infested homeless creature roaming around, it's ours.  I tend to adopt the least adoptable animals.  I find out exactly why they were not adopted once they are mine but I work it out.  Every creature deserves love and comfort in this life.  I have always wanted to live in the country and my husband, as much as he would love it, has always balked.  He is afraid if I had more space it would just have more animals.  I don't know another husband in the world who would come home to six feral cats and only say, "You have the best heart.  You are just like Mother Theresa.  I knew you wouldn't let them euthanize those cats, you wouldn't have been able to live with yourself."  This was on top of the two cats, two dogs and two rabbits we already had.  He went to the garage, found his bite gloves (used for inmates who act like animals) and helped me fish those kitties out twice a day for their eye drops and medications.  I don't know of another guy who would have had that reaction.

I don't know if you have ever felt loved, really and truly loved, but there is no feeling like it.  My ex-boyfriend, who really wanted to marry me, loved me.  I know he did.  He was very good to me and it was a pretty easy relationship.  It was not as much work as my relationship with my husband.  We were both raised in Connecticut, had similar values, both didn't want kids, etc.  On paper it worked.  I didn't feel it in my heart.  I loved him, I really did but I knew I wouldn't love him forever.  It would have been an easy marriage.  I keep myself thin and attractive, speak eloquently with his colleagues, impress them with my wit and knowledge and I would in turn have a comfortable easy life. I would have been miserable.

My heart was breaking while my husband went through these last couple of years.  I didn't feel that love.  While it is wonderful to feel so loved, it is so much harder when it's taken away.  The logical part of your brain tells you it's not something wrong with you.  Every other part of your mind screams, "You're too fat! You're mean!  You're impatient!  You're old!  You're not the girl he met!!"  You try to quiet the voices but they are there, always there, clawing their way into your rational thoughts.  We cannot control those around us.  We can control ourselves so we look for any way we can change the situation.  We try every possible thing to right the world and put it back on it's axis and sometimes it just doesn't work.

While I watched those couples on their wedding days, saying the vows that would forever join them, I remembered that love.  We are lost, things are hard but I know us.  We ARE those two young, scared kids who pledged their love in a church, in front of God and a few hundred of our closest friends (some of whom I've never seen since that day).  Life is getting in the way of living right now but I refuse to believe that we have changed so much that we can't get back to that place.  I can't believe I even thought I could give up trying.