nine years

there are extremely few digital pictures; those were the days of the scanner. my cousin, who was studying biorobotics, had a digital camera. we were married by the mayor of the town, who died three months later. my youngest sister, who was to be my maid of honor, was in the psych ward for slashing her wrists three days prior. my very dear friend (the violinist), was pregnant at the time and had the baby at 32 weeks, spending weeks in the NICU. my nonna and nonno (grandparents) were visibly ill with colon cancer (BOTH, same cancer) and died a year later (5 months apart); they were diagnosed two months later. my mother-in-law, who had a tittie attack when we told her we were eloping to vegas to be married by elvis, HATED the wedding and complained about it until she friggin dropped dead (LITERALLY). we were planning a garden ceremony, it rained. i think more FUCK ITs flew out of my mouth that day than ever before (maybe not since). the objective, however, was met: we became husband and wife, for better or worse.

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i was 16 and he was 18 when we first dated. i had just turned 16, his last girlfriend was a stripper, and it was the summer before he went away to college. despite the obvious, we "fell in love." it lasted until thanksgiving. HA!

we had many mutual friends and ran into each other at parties occasionally; it always had that intense kind of right-person-wrong-time feel. a few times over the years we went to dinner and/or made out a bit, but ultimately i felt he was a big asshole and i swore i would cut my own throat before ending up with him.

i got married the first time when i was almost 21, and he attended the wedding. i found out years later that he was appropriately crushed...he went back to school to his senior dinner dance that night and escaped his girlfriend with a bottle of jack, not to be seen until the next morning, passed out on a different floor of the hotel.

two years later, he finished graduate school and i was separating. when we met up again, i couldn't believe how much he'd changed. no longer was he the asshole i loved to hate, or more honestly, hated to love (or whatever)...

the rest is history.

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when i think about who we were at that wedding, i can't help but laugh. GOD DAMN we had no idea what the FUCK we were getting ourselves into...and me, thinking i had done it before. HA! so naive, so clueless, so cocky.

our history is a treasured gift, the rock i lean on those mornings i'd like to stab his sleeping face. i choose to love him those days, i choose to love the things i don't like...i choose him and everything about him. that, to me, is love.

i can't believe everything we've endured to build this family. i can't BELIEVE we have a dead baby. together. i can't believe we have triplets. together. this is our life.

this is our fucking life and i choose to love it.