It is good

"Do you have any doubts about getting married?"

Me: [Silence...thinking.]

"Because if you have doubts its not a good idea to get married."

Me: [Silence...shock.]


I thought I would get married a long time ago. When I was really young, I pegged myself as a high school sweetheart type and then when that didn't work out I figured I would meet my soul mate in college. Nope. Graduate school? No. Turns out I was meant for more than marriage.

It all makes sense now and I can see how it would have been a complete disaster for me to get married before the age of 30. There were two people I would have married in an instant. One of them nearly killed me, not exactly but it was a painful, passionate, violent, no-going-back end and the other was a younger version of my dad and I had taken way too many psychology classes to fall into that wormhole. After the former, I was changed. I was no longer willing to lose myself in a relationship. I would never let that happen to me again.

This is who I am. Take it or leave it.

When I met Aaron I didn't care about men. I still loved men, don't get me wrong, but I didn't care about them in relation to me. I felt so broken, so broken open, I couldn't/wouldn't spend energy on someone who wasn't  j u s t  r i g h t.

I don't know what it was about Aaron that felt just right to me. The ease of it. The sense that he wanted to know me but not consume me. The fact that he lived 2.5 hours away from me so our relationship was paced and scheduled, which fit nicely into my career driven life (and his too). The fact that he was a fire fighter and for whatever godforsaken reason, I "get" what it is he does and why he does it and I support him totally and without hesitation even it means he might leave me for two weeks or...forever.

Do I have doubts about getting married? Of course I do. I'm a realist and I understand human nature and I know that we are fickle and tempestuous and mean and deceitful, prideful and cruel. But we are also kind and loving and devout and patient and good. I know that love is the greatest magic in the world. Do I have doubts? Yes, but my hope and my resolve are so much greater.

So it is with faith, something I have struggled with my entire life, I walk forward with this person. Like anything that means something to you, it takes work but there's this thread, it was there when I met him, that keeps me going when I feel too tired and too stubborn. Whatever it is, it is good.