Small Strokes Big Oaks

“Oh my gosh, a year ago you got married! Can you even believe it’s been a year?”

I’ve been hearing this a lot lately, and, honestly, I can absolutely believe it’s been a year. Looking back, time has sort of flown. Or, at least, at this time last year, I couldn’t even picture making it this far or what this year would even look like and now, all of a sudden, we’re here, looking at another October, looking at each other and looking ahead to the rest of our lives.

This past year has been full of trials and errors, joys and anger. I can honestly say there has never been a year in which I have worked as hard, been as introspective, been as retrospective, been as afraid and nervous, and cried as much as this past year. And I can also honestly say that there has never been a year in which I have laughed as much, been as proud, learned as much, and felt as connected as this past year.

But this year hasn’t been about us. I mean, it has, in the sense that it has been about Ashley and Tim, but this year hasn’t been about us functioning together so much as it has been about us learning how to function apart. Instead of trying to come together right away and learn how to be strong in our interdependent relationship, this year has been all about trying to preserve our identities while creating a marriage. As you can imagine, that’s created more tension than progress.

I’m finally starting to realize that being a little dependent on someone isn’t always a bad thing, and that leaning on each other and fostering each other’s successes and building up each other’s spirits and supporting each other’s endeavors can, actually, help us become better people apart than we ever could be, but to do that, we need to function more as a unit than as two people who happened to marry each other.

Furthermore, I’m finally starting to feel comfortable in my own skin, in my own apartment, and in my own marriage. For an entire year, I felt unsure of who I was now, who I was supposed to become. I wanted to be an activist, a writer, a teacher, a wife. I wanted to redefine what it meant to be a wife and a teacher. I wanted to rescue a dog and spend all my spare time with my husband, cooking excellent meals and reading books. I wanted to always be the one with the cute clothes and the excellent sense of style. I wanted to be the perfect hostess. The perfect wife. The perfect woman. Perfect. And I believe this drive toward perfection started with the perfect wedding.

I took on too much, and I lost myself in the process.

But, through our mutual support and our marriage, we’re not only finding ourselves and each other, but we’re finding our partnership. We’re finding humor in the imperfections, allowing ourselves to make choices that will affect the rest of our lives without fear, realizing that we don’t have to make a move to the city to be young and hip and fun, and that our friends will still be our friends even if we turn them down so we can spend some much-needed time together. We’re writing articles and running marathons. We’re giving a wonderful dog a good home. We’re teaching like our hair is on fire.

We’re doing well, and we’re doing good. And we’re doing it together as much as we’re doing it apart.

I’ll never forget how special our wedding day was. I’ll never forget how perfect our love was, and how loved we were. I’ll never forget how beautiful I felt, how lucky I felt. But, now, a year later, looking forward rather than back feels good; it feels right. Exactly one year from the time I was walking down the aisle, Tim and I will be celebrating his first marathon, my strides with my writing, our successful first year of marriage, and all the years that are to come. And we’ll do it with our wedding video, year-old champagne, and thawed wedding cake in a hotel room in Chicago as Tim ices his knees. And it will be perfect.