Anniversaries

Our wedding was three years ago today. I jokingly said to my mother "It's hard to say if things have gotten better in those three years, or way worse."

Except, like many jokes, it's not really a joke.

When I first got our amazing wedding photos I had trouble looking through them.

Instead of seeing pictures, I saw memories. I remembered crying for hours the night before the wedding, sure Dan was making a colossal mistake in marrying someone his daughter hated so much. I remembered his ex-wife calling and yelling at him for an hour the first day of our honeymoon and wondered why the hell I had willingly signed on for this much animosity... for the rest of my life. The wedding itself, a ceremony promising union, felt like the biggest possible farce.

Hard to believe you could not find perfection against this backdrop.

Fast forward three years. Life is still uncertain, although I cry much less these days. Miss L no longer radiates hatred from her being if I walk into the room. And although Dan's ex-wife remains an obstacle to the future we want more often than not, we are learning how not to give in to terrorist demands.

We married in the eye of a hurricane but the storm is finally passing. Clouds are breaking; blue skies appearing.

Maybe the wedding felt false because I thought it should be the beginning of happily ever after and ours felt like the furthest thing from.

A wedding is a beginning, period.

On our wedding day, Dan and I joined hands and committed to a life together, and that's exactly what we're doing. It's not the perfect life. It never is, not for anyone. We're just living life, and living it together.

Over rough roads and smooth.

Doesn't get much more authentic or more celebratory than that.