Random thoughts on year one

Year one

I have a lot of feelings about marriage. I always have. Very intense feelings about it, before I married.  I don’t necessarily connect with being a wife or in a marriage as much as I connect with living life forever with Ryan.  It being "us".

There are times that I stop and think, “goodness, how is this my life”. How did enough little miracles happen in this great big world that Ryan and I got to meet.  That I got the privilege to live life with this gem.

I was walking in Brooklyn Botanical Gardens with a good friend of over ten years.  He was asking how our first year of marriage was going and how he can’t believe that it is almost a year. My friend and I have been around for each other through our past ten years of living and dating in NYC. We both have had our hearts broken to pieces by NYC men. We’ve dreamed about our futures, learned contentment, and explored the dating world.  My first response was simple, “it’s really awesome having one person always looking out for you.” It just is. It’s simple and I was ready for a simple kinda life. (Just like Gwen Stefani in 1998)

There’s amazing friends and family, I have both. Two of my best friends offered to turn their back shed into an apartment when a boyfriend of three years broke up with me. That’s kind on so many levels. My family has always invited me to holidays and never made me feel like an outlier because I was the only single one.  I have amazing people in my life, I always have. I’m thankful.

But having a life partner is different. At this point in my life, I am ready. It isn’t a task, it’s a blessing.
  

 Ryan and I talk about if we met in our twenties. We laugh about how we might not have dated. We talk about all the people we did date and it’s fun to learn about each other. The other types of people that held special places in our hearts, but ended. Ended because there was better for both of us. This kind of better:

My Dad loves giving advice and one thing he told me when I was dating someone and figuring out if I should stay with them or not, he said, “can you picture yourself happier.” The answer was always yes before Ryan. I always made a little (and sometimes huge) compromise about the people I dated. Until Ryan.

Deep in my heart I was always happy, I enjoyed life and had people surround me who I deeply valued. But I also was a tiny bit jealous of people who weren’t going through their 20s single/dating/searching/broken hearted and earning the label of someone’s ex-girlfriend.

But now, I’m super thankful for those years. It’s truly amazing to now look back and realize how much I learned about myself, grew into the person who was meant to match with Ryan, and I gained a deep understanding about the types of people that make up this world.  It helped me realize what a jackpot of a guy I got when I found Ryan. (Just FYI - there are some real losers/challenging people out there, not naming names, just saying).

Now we have both come home. We found a home in each other. It’s the start of our journey and I wouldn’t trade this past year for anything. I get so excited when he comes home and I love sharing our home, our lives, our futures, and our fears together. It’s intensely vulnerable but worth more than anything I ever thought I would have as my own. It's been one year and I count my blessings.