Brian and I celebrated three years of marriage yesterday. It’s hard to believe it was over a thousand days ago that we vowed to be joined to each other forever in front of friends and family in downtown Savannah, Georgia. At risk of unoriginality, I truly don’t remember much about our wedding day. When I try to think back to specific moments my thoughts are a blur. I can’t recall what I was feeling walking down the aisle in front of the eyes that only filled a quarter of the large cathedral, the moment of our first kiss as husband and wife or the taste of our wedding cake. I can only conclude this amnesia was my mind and body’s defense mechanism in order to prevent myself from having a wedding day panic attack.
But every day that has followed has been deeply embedded in my memory. Although it does not feel as though we’ve been married for three years, we certainly have been able to get a lot accomplished. Right after Brian and I returned from our honeymoon we moved over 900 miles from Columbia S.C. to Cape Cod. After a little over a year on the cape we moved again to Boston and have been here since. I have started two new jobs while Brian landed at a firm he’s seen his future in from day one. We even created a human being who is now a boisterous toddler. So perhaps it was all the action-packed, life-altering changes that made these past three years seem to go by so quickly. I have read theories that the years from childhood through college are perceived to pass more slowly since they are filled with marks of rich impressions. If this is the case, then these past three years should have crawled instead of flown, since we have created so many deep, incredible memories.
So what have I learned these last three years of marriage? Well as you probably gathered from the title of this post, not very much. Three years in and I’m still just as far from being an expert at this eternal alliance. Marriage is hard and Brian and I have to work at it every day. Although we always knew our opposite qualities would fulfill each other in a complementary manner, we are still working at dealing with how to rectify situations when our opposite tendencies conflict, which they seldom do. Marriage has forced us to navigate through these situations and, after plenty of trial and error, learn how to do this without utterly offending and angering the other. Both of us have grown tremendously since our “I-DOs” and I believe relationships that only grow from conflict are the ones that are strong and worthwhile. With the help of the other, Brian and I have spent the past three years becoming the best versions of ourselves.
All these years later I am still just as in love with the boy I met at a neighborhood bar the first weekend of my residency. Although our meeting may not have been one out of a poetic novel, we have spent every day since writing our own filled with adventure, suspense, triumphs and tears. It’s hard to believe that any more love can be fit into one lifetime, but I can’t wait to see what happens. I truly look forward to our journey ahead.