Eh?? What?? Ten years already???

PHEW!

A little over ten years ago, while living in a little casita behind CNM, I cooked a very belated birthday cake for my boyfriend of 3 years. It was one of those Cake Boss boxed deals, and it looked questionable, but it was edible and delicious, and most importantly, I'd conquered my anxiety and procrastination about it. That was cause for celebration enough! I have pretty bad ADHD and a tough time following through on plans and finishing things!

And then he got on one knee and put a beautiful silver and garnet ring on my left ring finger and asked me to marry him. Me! of all people! Scary Met, formerly fueled by righteous rage but now disabled and with a broken brain! I'd never even made it past the 3-year mark for relationships without everything falling apart!

And him! He'd been through a lot of rough relationships, including one which seemed eerily similar, and lived in 8 other states before asking me if he could crash here to get on his feet, and whoopsie doodle we fell in love. He stopped my hands and held me tight when my brain wanted me to die! He stayed by my side for a week while I was in the hospital with a nearly septic case of pneumonia that tricked my immune system into attacking perfectly healthy tissue! He stayed and helped me figure out ways to keep a roof over our heads and food in our bellies when my job fired me for the grave offense of being sick! He went to medical appointments with me to be a witness and advocate, when most of the doctors I sought help from blew me off for being young and having ostensibly normal basic blood labs! He encouraged me to apply for disability even after I'd been rejected! 

And he did it all without ever raising a hand to hurt me, without invalidating my experience, without accusing me of manipulation! In fact, he fought everything in my brain that was constantly attacking me when I couldn't fight back myself!

I couldn't believe my good fortune. I've usually had bad-to-iffy luck in my life. As the poet and philosopher Swift once wrote, "Got a long list of ex-lovers, [and] they'll tell you I'm insane". Teachers, bosses, and even family had all been fed up with me at various times throughout my life. But not this guy.

So what did I do? I said yes, of course!! It was the second-best decision I'd ever made in my life, inviting him to move here being the first.

Fast forward a few months. My brain was still tootling along with its fears and anxieties. I had already decided not to ask my family for help paying for a wedding, and I was afraid of wedding crashers. Ken's family wasn't remotely in a financial situation to throw a wedding. I was occasionally looking at a non-traditional wedding planning book, but everything cost money that we didn't have. Ken saw something in the Weekly Alibi or on Facebook and called me over to look. The City of Albuquerque was hosting, in celebration of Valentine's Day, a mobile pet adoption/group wedding in Old Town. It was barely even a question; this meant I didn't have to endure shame for asking for help or stress out over inviting people and then feeding them.

It was a chilly and blustery February afternoon. The city held the event on February 9th, which was sort of a memorial day in my family (my uncle Marc passed away on February 9th, 1985, a month before I was born). The plaza was largely deserted except for people checking out the event. We already had three cats, so we only briefly stopped at the mobile pet adoption center. He wore a nice shirt and teal tie purchased for a different reason a year or so before; I wore a black and purple party dress from Thrift Town. We rode the 66 bus both ways. I got confused and wrote the wrong thing on the marriage certificate. We couldn't afford the photos that were taken during the event, but there was a photo booth not far away that had been brought in for the occasion. I walked into the park's sign face-first after it was all over. It was full of inauspicious things, let's just say.

But I still remember that ceremony, gazing into his eyes through tears of joy as we stood in the gazebo, held hands and said our vows. We didn't even have wedding bands yet, so he just slid my engagement ring back onto my finger. I think I'd given him a ring to wear until we had bands, but I don't remember where it is. Despite all odds, it was the happiest moment of my life.

In the years since we've been through all sorts of things; major problems while occasionally traveling, intermittently having a car and riding the bus everywhere otherwise, being crushingly poor and scrambling to find ways to survive month to month, loss of friends and social groups, mysterious medical problems and severe illnesses, both of us having autoimmune conditions and unpredictable health problems, moving twice, grief and loss for two of our cats and beloved family on both sides, and with both of us having serious mental health problems resulting in hospitalizations for both of us (at different times!). In the darkest depths of my depression, every time I wanted to run away or quit the gauntlet of life, every time my brain told me that I didn't deserve to live, much less have the comfort of a bed, food, or warmth, or even affection, every time I felt trapped and took my desperation and fear out on myself, he fought back against it to protect me from my own hands and carry me, sometimes crying and screaming, back home safely. Every single time. 

Things are still hard sometimes; we're still disabled and poor, we're still working through our respective mental stuff, I view having a car as a transient state that can be easily lost to neglect or accident, and the last two weeks of the month are still a challenge to survive. But along the way, we found medical providers who listen, diagnoses that could be treated, medicine that works, got mostly on top of mental health issues, rescued another cat, and even made some new friends. Ken reconnected with his family and was able to see them again for the first time in 16 years, and I reconnected with my family after 12 years of avoiding contact out of shame and fear. Every month when we get paid, we go out on a date and have a relatively nice dinner to celebrate surviving another month.

It feels like it's all gone by so fast, but somehow we've reached the ten-year mark. It's been an intense ride getting here, but together we've survived and even found a modicum of peace and comfort for ourselves. If I had to do it all again, I wouldn't want anyone else by my side through it.

After all, there are more decades ahead of us to live through, and I know that as long as we're together, we can survive it and maybe even have a little fun along the way.