Day 11

I don't think I've told the story of how S and I met yet, have I?  *digs through archive, thankful it's still short*  oops, yes I have.  Hmmm.  Well there goes my idea for today's post.   Oh I know!!  I'll tell you how we ended up married.  That'll work!

Okay - so y'all know how I was living in LA (that would be Louisiana, not California), and S bought me a bus ticket and I ran away from my abusive ex in the middle of the night and all that.  I got here, and we just really clicked.  We both kind of thought we would, but we'd left that open.  Our main goal was to get me out of the situation I'd been in, and somewhere safe. 

I got here in October.  October 18th, 1999 to be exact.  I don't remember the exact date, but it was less than a month later that we both admitted we loved each other, and wanted this to last.  Talk about a heady moment!  It wasn't very long after that that we were both a little more than tipsy one night after playing darts (S was in a dart league when I met him - best player on the team by far!) in the backseat of the car on the way home.  I cuddled into him and said "you know I'm going to love you forever?"  he responded "you know I'm going to marry you."  His wasn't a question, it was a statement and it scared the pants off me.  Well, not literally, his stepfather was driving, but you know what I mean!

I was still in the process of divorcing my first husband.  My mother had been married 3, or was it 4? times.  None of them had been any good.  I'd had friends in abusive relationships, toxic marriages, friends whose parents had divorced in all sorts of horrible ways.  My own experience with marriage had been anything but positive.  As far as I was concerned marriage was nothing but trouble.  WHY would S want to ruin a perfectly good relationship with something like that?

Because he's a good, Christian, traditional southern boy, that's why.  As far as he's concerned, if you love someone, you make it official.  So if I wasn't willing to marry him, he just didn't see a longterm future for us.  I fussed and complained and whined.  I accused him of coercion and blackmail and all sorts of things.  But he is really stubborn.  So I agreed to marry him.  But I still hold it over his head.  It's all his fault.  :)  And... that night in the car?  Closest I ever got to a proposal.  I wasn't asked to marry him, I was TOLD I was going to marry him.

All told, it didn't take him that long.  We were married July 1st 2000.  Once I agreed, he wasted no time in planning the wedding.  We got married in Gatlinburg, TN because the laws in OK wouldn't let us get married country version of Vegas, and shortly after the ceremony we were walking around and someone stopped us and asked if we were newlyweds, and I so proudly answered "Yes!" - and got us sucked into a 20 minute spiel on timeshares!  S still hasn't let me live that down.

I just was, and am, happy to be married to him.  He's shown me that not all marriages are bad - they don't all end in pain and sorrow.  We've been together for more than 10 years, married for 9 now, and I can honestly say we have had 3 bad fights.  That's it.  We have small arguements, and we fuss at each other.  But we talk, and work things out and don't let petty things take precedence over the important stuff.  I still maintain we could have done all this without that piece of paper, but it was important to him, and now it's a part of who I am.  I am S's wife, just as much as I am my mother's daughter, or my children's mother.  It's part of my identity, and I wouldn't have it any other way.