When you meet your soul mate do you walk up and say “Hi, nice to meet you-your life as of right now has been eternally changed, you’re welcome.”?
Do you remember the moment? Do you think about it in daydreams? Do you remember how it felt-do you remember it at all?
It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when your life changes when you don’t even know that its going to change.
Do you remember how it felt? What you wore, what their voice sounded like? Or was it a long time afterward that it hit you that, that moment was noteworthy… and you try like crazy to bring back every detail.
“Are you Christa?” Suzee handed a post it note with a phone message on it to her.
Christa thought to herself, who is this weird girl, as Suzee walked back through the swinging kitchen doors from the dish room and made her way back to the hostess podium in the front of the restaurant.
That night the universe shifted.
There are plenty of moments in our lives where we meet someone for the first time or we perform some everyday action that we forget, it doesn’t leave an impression, it doesn’t stick.
There are moments that mean a lot to us, but we tend to dismiss the details. Years later, can you recall the sounds, the smells, the moment-that meeting that changed your life.
That night they went back to work, but the world had changed.
After Christa got used to the weirdness, these two girls became friends. Christa was 17 and Suzee was 21. After a while they became best friends.
I was always interested in what Christa was doing. I always wanted her attention. I hadn’t had a real girl friend in quite a while, especially someone that I felt was so different than I was. She was so independent, so mouthy, so I just go and do and am whatever I want.
When we worked together it was harmony, it was seamless; when we were done working it was the same, never had someone before become such an important part of my existence.
We got to the point when we were outside of work, we spent hours on the phone or laying on the hood of Christa’s first car, a blue Hyundai Accent; discussing boyfriends, our week, our job, shopping, vacations, tv shows and whatever we could think to talk about. Laughter was incessant.
The longer time went by the conversations contained tears, advice, comfort and support.
Life started getting harder. We leaned on each other a lot.
I was getting married in 2001 and Christa was, of course, my bridesmaid. Her fiancé was her date to the wedding. On the way down the aisle, Christa asked, “are you sure you want to do this?”. We knew each other too well.
I was in a horrible place when I got married the first time, my grandmother and dad had just passed away. I was struggling in so many ways. I was depressed and didn’t even know it. A wedding sounded great, what a great distraction from the numbing pain. Yep, but after that comes a marriage, I think I missed that memo.
For the next few years after that, it was a struggle, there was heartache, there were drunken nights and some days, there was depression, arguments. There were come and save me moments. There were I can’t tell you how bad off I am moments. There were just some moments when we laid on my bed in my first apartment and took a nap.
To say that leaning on another human can give you life, can make you feel like you have something to live for, that you just couldn’t leave this earth because of the impact that it would have on that other person is a clear depiction of how we kept saving each other.
We didn’t even understand this bond, we felt like family, we acted like family. At that time I was journaling a lot (my therapist, said it would do me good). It wasn’t actually writing from the soul, but a cold depiction of my days. Wednesday can’t get out of bed. Thursday got out of bed, what is the point, got back in bed- You see a pattern in my writing? If you look back on my journals the only days I could be peeled from my bed was when I had to crawl into work or Christa came to my apartment. When I look back that was my only happy place. She MADE me get up, but I never cared. She made me WANT to get up. Sooner or later I thought it was best for Christa to just move in with me. So she did. I’d like to say the rest is history, but not quite yet.
Things were changing. We were changing.
It was scary. It was exciting. It seemed perfectly natural and yet completely foreign. The day that I knew my heart was changed forever was the day of one of our friends weddings. We we getting ready together, bought a gift together and were doing things that couples do before they go to an event like this. I thought to myself, this just feels like this is the way it is supposed to be, and I had never felt such an ease with someone like this, I had bought a new dress and I kept thinking to myself, how much I just wanted her to tell me that she thought I looked pretty.
A few weeks later, she said that She would fight for me. I believed her. I never believed anyone like I believed her in that moment, saying that, I still haven’t believed anything as much since. Since that day it has been 15 years. There has been a Lot of life in those years. Coming up on year 10, I asked her to marry me. I had said that I would never get married again, but knew early on that I had only been meant to marry her.
That same year, our marriage was actually Legalized in the state of PA. The public had no idea of the effect we had on legislation. This year, 2019, marks 5 years of marriage. What a wedding. There couldn’ t have been anything more perfectly “US” than this day. Rented out an entire bed and breakfast for the weekend, outdoor ceremony conducted by our tattoo artist (who actually got ordained just so he could marry us), shots of Tequila before we walked down the aisle. Our wedding party of 16 danced down the aisle to the Black Eyed Peas -“Time of My Life”, our vows were a mix of Native American poetry and simple promises to each other and then the biggest party you have ever seen as we danced and at one point lost Christa but found her eating a Jell-O shot she dropped on the ground (the after reception experience is for another blog, but definitely called into the better or WORSE part of our vows early on). But there was never a more perfect day or a more beautiful bride (sorry, I could be biased).
Since we have been married LIFE has been full of the highest highs and lowest lows. Things that you just don’t go through without your best friend.
We won’t say that we are perfect by any stretch of the imagination. We won’t say that we have it all figured out, but I can say, we learn. We learn how to communicate in new ways, we learn how to give each other the best we have, we’ve learned that we can work and play together because we actually like being together.
I’ve learned that we are always changing and it is up to us to make the decision to change together. Even though a relationship is exciting when it is new; I would never trade it for this time in our lives, when honestly, I love her more than I ever have; and I know that because I want to be a better human for myself to be the best for her.
At 5 years in I’m looking at sites for vow renewal…but don’t tell her that yet…she thinks we should wait another 5…we’ll see. After all, we are still learning.
