15/13/8

Today my husband and I celebrate our 15/13/8 anniversary. 15 years since we started dating, 13 years since our domestic partnership ceremony at city hall and 8 years since our wedding ceremony at my parents house. (After Prop 8 passed in California we decided we didn’t want to get married so we became domestic partners in San Francisco, and officially tied the know only after Prop 8 was overturned and gay marriage was legal again in our state). I’m so thankful that I met my husband and we ended up together. It’s not been smooth sailing, but we’re finally traveling in calm, tranquil waters. Our marriage has maybe never been stronger.

I really don’t take our relationship for granted. I did not have a lot of relationships before I met my husband. In fact, when I met him, at 24 years old, I thought I might ending up living alone forever. I was worried about that at 16 too, when all my high school friends were hooking up and I was… way too afraid to even consider it.

I used to go to a lot of concerts back then. A LOT of concerts. A couple of the venues (most notably the Fillmore) would give out free posters after shows, and each poster was an original drawn for that specific concert. I had dozens of those posters hanging on my walls. They followed me until the apartment I lived in before buying this house. They were on my walls when my husband and I first started dating, and they stayed up after he moved in.

That is how we learned how many concerts that I had been too, that he had also attended. There were at least six or seven of those concert posters that he also had stored in the garage of his parent’s house. One specific show we knew for sure we’d both been at, because my friend had lost his wallet and the lead singer of Weezer had called out his name trying to return it to him, but he butchered the pronunciation and we all called him that for the rest of his life (he didn’t mind because he idolized Weezer and was thrilled to have Rivers Cuomo butcher his name). My husband remembered that happening, so I know for sure he was at that show.

And I was thinking recently, how crazy it was that my future husband was in that small room seeing Weezer when I was there. I remember feeling particularly lonely at that show, because a friend of mine was dating Alex Mack (the actress who played Alex Mack, obviously) and that was a big deal in our friend circle at that time, which made me even more aware of my perpetually single status. I remember wondering if I’d ever find someone, ever fall in love with someone who might also fell in love with me. I felt hopeless and alone.

If someone had told me, at that concert, that the man I was going to marry was in that room right then, could I have believed it? If they had said, you’ll need to finish high school first, and then college, and then wait three more years and before someone from college will introduce you (because we never actually met during college, even though we were there together for all four years), and then you’ll fall in love and get married and have kids. Would I have believed it? That person would have been telling me I was going to get everything I ever wanted, and the person I was going to have it with was in that room.

Honestly, I probably would have been most excited to learn I was actually going to get into Berkeley. 😉

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately – how happy my 16 year old self would have been to learn that my future, my perfect future was standing in that room. I had a lot of sadness, depression, anxiety and disordered eating to wade through before I’d get to have that future, and then it wouldn’t happen in quite the happy way I was hoping, but eventually, many years later, I would have everything I ever wanted, and it wouldn’t matter so much anymore what it took to get there. I could have saved myself so much anguish if I had known that.

Happy anniversary my love. I’m glad we found each other, so many years after that Weezer concert at the Fillmore.