lalala

I was eighteen and naive and I thought I would marry him. He slipped a promise ring on my finger during our anniversary dinner and he told me he wished that it was an engagement ring instead. I sat in our hotel in Denver and instant messaged him and wondered how I would get through the next four years of college without him. And so I didn't. I stayed instead of leaving, which was a very big sacrifice because it ended a few of my friendships because when you're not married or not old enough, choosing a boy first is a big deal to your girlfriends. But I maybe selfishly did that and when I turned twenty one and a few months later he slipped an actual engagement ring on my finger as we overlooked the city in the place where we spent one of our very first dates. And I think back to all of the memories that eight years together holds for us. The laughs over the things that we've said and our inside jokes like, "I was going to say choice but I said turn, so 'turce.'" and the TV shows we quote instead of using actual words and how he sits through hours of girly girl TV shows like Grey's Anatomy and Pretty Little Liars and loves them just as much as I do and the fights we've had where there isn't anything to do but go to bed angry and maybe go to bed angry again the next night and then making up when he makes me laugh when I just don't want to. There are hundreds of thousands of things packed into those eight years that make this life so sweet. And even when I suggest something like restaining all of our floors a darker color or repainting our bedroom for the 54th time or selling all of our furniture and starting over and he just rolls his eyes at me because he hasn't yet learned to just smile and nod and agree with all of my wild and crazy ideas, I still love him and I am thankful that he's here to ground me and when I'm crying over the very stupidest thing that is beyond my control and makes me sound like the most entitled selfish brat he's still holding me tight and whispering the sweetest words in my ear to make everything better and everything okay. So in eight more years I know that I will have filled up many more journals with our stories and laughs and I will have written him a thousand more love notes and we will still be fighting over things that probably don't even matter and that will be forgotten by this time next week, but I'll still be madly in love and I'll still remember our humble beginnings as two smitten teenagers who had no idea about the real world of dating and love and marriage but jumped head first into a love that would last a lifetime.