A Highly Unromantic Ode to Marriage

The night my husband and I were supposed to go to a concert, I sat in my parked car hyperventilating.

I was meeting him there, and I did eventually make it inside, but barely. Getting dressed had been hard, and getting to the venue even harder. Parking and walking inside felt like storming Normandy.

Somehow I managed it so well that later, he told me he had no idea anything was wrong

Meanwhile, I was certain everyone within a ten-foot radius could tell I was thisclose to hurling.

Panic attacks are fun like that.

These days, even a simple dinner out can feel like too much. The current working theory is that my brain is finally in the headspace (pardon the pun) to process a lot of crap.

In other words, the reward for finally being safe and loved is your brain saying, "So hey, remember all those times you couldn't fall apart? Well, buckle up."

And this man of mine- he doesn’t try to fix it. He just sits there with me.

Which even now surprises me because compared to my previous experience with marriage, struggling without someone holding it against me feels...strange.

We've been together long enough by now that neither of us is particularly moved by the other's crazy anyway.

Romance, right?

Tomorrow is our tenth wedding anniversary, and we had planned to be in Italy to celebrate it.

We aren't in Italy, though; we're in the damn weeds together, and weirdly...I think that says more about our relationship than Italy ever could.

For a long time, I'd been criticized and chastized for simply being me. I've lost count of the times I was told "You need to learn to__". When my first marriage finally ended, I was trying to figure out who the hell I was now that he wasn't telling me who I should be.

I basically stumbled through the dating scene, and it was...awkward.

After a particularly painful heartbreak, I stopped looking to everyone else for the answer. I sat alone by the fireplace that night with a pen and started writing down what I actually wanted, and from whom.

(Sounds so deliciously Gothic, doesn’t it?)

Page after page, I wrote down the qualities that mattered most. First on my list was someone whose life didn't revolve entirely around me.

He had to have ambition, a sense of humor, self-respect, and someone who knew who he was.

Between you and me, I didn't actually believe such a unicorn existed outside movies and flattering obituaries.

I was daring the universe to prove me wrong.

Literally just a few weeks later, the unicorn materialized.

Take from that what you will.