Ten Years

I met Ted in a mutual friend’s dining room where I had come over to play a game.  He, being at the time the local comic book guy, had dropped by to deliver a couple of comics for my friends.  When introduced, I looked up and smiled – and according to Ted, he knew.

It wasn’t so simple for me, at first I was very unsure.  Hesitant to be with someone a tiny bit older than myself, hesitant to be with someone with “baggage”, hesitant to be with anyone at all.  At twenty five I’d experienced pain and was content having my own apartment, my own job, my own space, and my weekends all to myself.

Ted never gave up.  When our first date was a total disaster, he became my friend.  He took me to brunch, he listened to me endlessly, and he worked harder than I could have imagined anyone working to be a positive part of my life.

I knew I loved him the night he sat up awake all night long holding me in his arms while I was sick with the stomach flu, running back and forth to the bathroom with me to hold my hair every time I had to throw up.

It’s not Disney romance, but it’s extremely real and completely true.  It’s what matters more than flowers and poetry (although there is that as well).

My experience of true love hasn’t been a thunderbolt from above, it’s been a fire kindled by selfless acts of devotion and nurtured slowly over years to a conflagration that lights my way every single night and warms me through the coldest conditions that our world has to offer.  Every single year, it grows stronger until my heart feels like it could burst from loving him.

People have said they loved me before, but if actions don’t follow the words then the words have no meaning.  Everything that Ted does speaks to me of love; every laugh given, every thoughtful remark, every time he’s put me first.

Last night I lay beside him and he thanked me for being his wife and partner through this difficult world we live in.  He thanked me.

Thank you, Ted.  Your face is my most beautiful vision, your voice my favorite song, the life you’ve given me the greatest love story I could have ever imagined.

Thank you for ten years.  Thank you for many, many more.

All my love is yours, always.  Happy Anniversary.