I married my love this day two weeks ago. Ever the romantics, we wed on the seventh anniversary of the day we met. Seven years ago, we were both going to school in Missoula, Montana. I was 19, engaged to someone else and Dickie had just been accepted to graduate school in Indiana. Of course, our love prevailed and our prior commitments and our individual new-relationship-stifling plans did not deter us. I immediately broke off my engagement, and it took less than a week to fall in love and only another week to start making life-changing plans to keep each other in our lives. I moved 2,000 miles from home to be with Dickie while he went to school in Muncie, Indiana.
The word that comes to mind to describe those first two years together is passion. Maybe heated passion would be more accurate. Two years of intense affection, dedication, fervor, anger, and red-hot tempers. Lots of strong emotions on both sides. Lots of loving, lots of yelling, lots of crying, lots of laughing. Back then we were just kids trying to learn how to be a couple. And well, I think we figured it out...but it took us several more years.
Our Ball State years were very conflicting for me. I wanted to be there because I loved Dickie and I loved our friends, loved making enough money to support myself and I even loved living in Middle America, but I loathed my job, was embarrassed for being so much younger than everyone we knew, and was intensely jealous of Dickie and the other graduate students we hung out with. I was 20, held a meager associates degree and worked as a lowly secretary while everyone else I knew was pursuing higher education. It was embarrassing feeling so inadequate and uneducated. Therefore, the day after Dickie's graduation we were on our way back to Missoula so I could get my education; so I could gain some dignity in our little community of friends.
They were two of my favorite years. I thoroughly enjoyed receiving my liberal arts education. I was in love with all of my professors, couldn't get enough of feminist theory and civil war history, and will always have a place in my heart for the dismal grey winters of Missoula. It's a shame a person can't reasonably become a career student, because I think I am my happiest sitting in a lecture listening and learning about things nobody bothered telling me before. It's exciting to find that you are really interested in a certain subject and never tire of learning about it. At any rate, the two years flew by for me, but poor Dickie was as anxious to leave Missoula as I was anxious to leave Muncie two years earlier, so the day after my graduation we packed up our things and on a whim moved to New Mexico.
Although I am back in Albuquerque now and couldn't be happier, Albuquerque did not win my heart the first go-around. I had never been to the American Southwest, but Dickie talked it up as if it was the most glorious, awe-inspiring place on our earth (which I now realize it certainly could be), but at the time, when we first arrived to Albuquerque, I was disheartened and felt like I had been duped. This place was dry, dusty and brown. Lots of dirty concrete, box stores and suped up cars. Why did he bring me here? I found a decent job, but brought in a pretty insignificant income, while Dickie didn't find anything at all. We knew things were tough for a lot of people, but we certainly hadn't realize it was the onset of the great recession and Dickie was just among the many thousand of able, hardworking young men who couldn't land a job. Instead, we became frustrated, embarrassed and angry. It certainly colored my overall view of the place we called home. I felt stifled, trapped, angry and just wanted out.
After the longest six months of my life, Dickie finally got a job opportunity, but it was in Chicago. He was happy for the job, of course, but wasn't thrilled about moving to Chicago. I, however, was over the moon. I had wanted to live in Chicago since I moved to Indiana when I was 19 and I had wanted to live in a city since I was a little girl. I could hardly stand waiting the two weeks before we could leave. I (naively) couldn't get out of the desert fast enough, whereas Dickie cried as we drove away from the last pink sprawling New Mexican sunset we would see in years.
In December of 2008, we arrived in Chicago in our dusty Jeep Cherokee and moved into a classic brick pre-war walk-up in Chicago's Northside; near the lake and Lincoln Park. I remember it was one of the most exciting experiences in my life. Like any other big city, the architecture in Chicago is beautiful and awe-inspiring and even more significant because I now lived there; it was my home. A small-town girl from Montana, living in Chicago felt like I was living in a movie...like it wasn't real life. Right away I got a great job at a prestigious law firm downtown and made an income double of anything I had made before. I never felt more proud of myself; I was living in a daydream I had had for years.
Although I grew numb to the excitement of the city surprisingly quickly and my "great" job turned out to be one of the most boring jobs I've ever held, I was still happy and still glad we had made the move. My Chicago experience will always be dear to me, because it was an experience I needed to shape who I am now and who I will be in the future. This experience wasn't just learning how to live with urban challenges, things like rude people on the streets, paying $8 for a gallon of milk, traffic jams, trying to figure out how to get ten bags of groceries home on the train, etc., the true depth of the experience was living with a dejected and depressed partner who could not see past his own sadness to enjoy any of happiness and success I was enjoying. It was challenging, to say the least. Dickie's big Chicago job fell thru a couple of weeks after we had arrived and another opportunity wouldn't present itself for the entire two years we lived in Chicago. The guilt and heavy heart he acquired while being unemployed in New Mexico only grew darker and heavier the months he spent unemployed in Chicago. This frightening economic downturn was horrible and it destroyed Dickie's sense of self worth, but I think it was important. Important for our relationship because it forced us to learn patience, kindness and how to be frugal. And I think we discovered a strength that will help us through all the other hardships we'll have down the road.
The two years we spent freezing in Chicago, New Mexico began popping up in our thoughts and in our conversation. Although I was so anxious to leave it the first time, I began daydreaming and wishing we were back. Dickie had been having the same daydreams long before I had, but all of sudden, one grey cold winter day, we decided we were moving back to the Southwest, as soon as our lease was up, with or without jobs and/or money to get there. Soon after we made the decision, Dickie got his first big break in two years; he accepted a job with the American Red Cross in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After all the disappointments and hardships we had been through, we couldn't believe our luck.
We returned to Albuquerque last May and for the first time in our relationship, we both felt that we are home. For the last seven years, home for me was Dickie, wherever we were together, but finally, we discovered a real, tangible place that we could call home. I think a reason Dickie and I are such great partners is we know HOW to give and take and WHEN to give and take. It took us seven years to find a place that made us both happy at the same time, but I think the seven years we took taking turns has helped in the over-all well being of our relationship now.
Dickie and I knew from the start that we would be life partners, but it is comforting to know he is my husband and I his wife. It's funny, it took us one week to fall in love, six weeks to shack up, but seven years to get hitched.
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| April 1, 2011 |
