Eight Years Ago

Eight years ago I did something I had never done in my whole life; I told a guy how I felt about him in straightforward and clear terms.  I spent exactly a month thinking about whether or not I wanted to do this, whether it was the right thing to do, how to say what I was feeling.  I listened to a lot of Joni Mitchell and  k.d. Lang, I took long walks by my parent's house in England, and I listened to my own heart.  And then I told him what was inside it.

And it didn't backfire, in fact, it turned out he was feeling the same way.  My affections were returned for the first time in my life at age 24, and it was heady and powerful.  Our relationship was so beautiful on the inside, but difficult for our friends to accept.  There was an age difference, there were, let's say, philosophical differences between the two of us, and many of our friends didn't like it or understand it.

Nothing bonds you to someone like feeling it's you and your love against the world.  And so we became very close, trusted each other completely, let ourselves fall in love absolutely all the way, so that talk of engagement and a future was commonplace and easy.  But we gave ourselves the gift of a year of dating, followed by 9 months of engagement, so that when the big day came, we were really ready.

Today my sweetheart and I are getting away for a day, taking just a day to remember that we are still a romantic partnership, that we exist apart from our daughter.  So you won't see a blog post tomorrow morning because with any luck at all, I'll be sleeping in!  But I wanted to take today to remember the amazing miracle that is our relationship, that it all began eight years ago when I told him I was in love.  And I still am.