No Question

I had a spur of the moment lunch with a group of coworkers yesterday at Miss Shirley's in Baltimore. It was uhhhhh-mazing. With my wedding just a mere 4 months away, we chatted about the planning, etc. One of my coworkers offered up three pieces of advice for a 'perfect' wedding day. Marry the right man, look pretty, have someone take a picture of you looking pretty.

On my drive home from work I thought about those three simple points. While it's my goal to look pretty and have someone take a picture of me looking pretty, I can't tell you with a 100% certainty that's going to happen. I can tell you with a 100% certainty that I'm marrying the right man.

The boy and I have dated for almost half of our lives. We started going to school together in the 6th grade and by the 7th grade our names were synonymous with one another. Almost every person that finds this out questions our decision of marriage after having dated so few people. I always laugh. Our relationship has not exactly been a walk in the park. We've split up more than once, dated other people, played games with one another's feelings, hated one another, and loved one another. We started dating as kids and had to learn how to 'date' as adults. And not only did we have to learn to grow as individuals, we had to learn to grow with one another.

In 2007 when we split for what felt like the billionth time, I packed up and moved on with life. It was hard. Harder than I ever imagined, but I was managing. And one tiny event resulted in life changing decisions. I ran out of ink. That is the simplest way to say it. My printer ran out of ink. It just so happened to run out of ink the night (well at 2am) before a 30 page final paper was due. I picked up the phone and instinctively called him. Not the dude I was dating at the time, not the roommates 5 feet down the hall, but him. Without even thinking about it. When he answered the phone I was dumbstruck. I apologized for calling so late, explained that I hadn't meant to call him, that I was having an issue with my printer, and that I'd figure it out. He told me to put a coat on, he'd go with me to the 24 hour CVS to get some ink.

A dialogue continued between us for the next week or so. I knew I was wasting time with the guy I was dating, both his and mine, and broke it off . I didn't break up with dude because of the boy, I broke up with dude because I knew it wasn't going anywhere and it wasn't fair to either of us, in all honesty I had been toying with it for awhile. The boy and I developed a friendship during the coming months, a genuine friendship. If you ask him now, he claims he was "wooing" me. Everything was easy. There was no fighting, no arguing, no complaining. It was just two people hanging out having a good time. Eventually the boy got tired of the gray that was our relationship. He wanted something more. And so began the start of a new, old relationship.

Don't get me wrong, we still fight, we still argue, we still complain. But this time it's different. Maybe there's a level of respect and understanding now that wasn't there before. Maybe absence did make the heart grow fonder. Or maybe we're both in the right place for the first time. But whatever it is, there is no doubt in my mind I will grow old with him.