five years

Remember when I was only one year in and knew everything?

Then again a few years later?

Here we are at year five. Five years feels like an important one. Maybe it’s just because it’s a five and that’s halfway to ten, so that’s significant somehow.

I’ve been married five years? Somehow. Five years, five years. If I say it enough, I’ll believe it. It’s both small and large. Scary and safe.

As I said in earlier posts about being married, I’m not one to sugarcoat. I’m not letting you in on the details and secrets that belong to just us, but I can at least tell you this has been the most difficult year yet. A lot of that had to do with it being 2020/2021 and these have just been the worst years, I mean why oh why oh why is this pandemic our reality lol I’m spiraling

We’ve spent five years (eight together total) learning about each other, pushing each others’ buttons and unraveling each and every single thread of personality and emotion and thing that makes up a human and created a whole mess of merging it together. This is the refining, the making each other more holy thing I was told about.

The refining was always spoken of in a romantic, easy way. You’ll make each other better. And he does make me better, but he also makes me worse. It’s a push and pull between two people who want to be selfish but have made the covenant to be anything but that.

If I’ve learned anything in five years, it’s that I know nothing.

How can a person know everything
At eighteen, but nothin’ at twenty-two?
And will you still want me when I’m nothin’ new?

Taylor Swift

I’ve also learned it goes too quickly. How have we done so much and so little in five years? How many do I have left? This has been a year of grieving too. I’ve leaned into it. To speak of death and loss is easy on my tongue. I also totaled my car about a month ago and haven’t stopped thinking about the what if of that moment. So while some days I want nothing more than to be alone and be angry at the man I married, I also want him for the rest of forever. Is juxtaposition the right word here? Those anxieties I felt in year one thinking about the future with him and how I need him to be there are still ever-present. Whew loving someone is scary and hard and fun and easy.

happy anniversary, m