Lucky Me
Today is my second wedding anniversary. We aren’t going to be doing anything special today to celebrate, mostly because she’s got a 12 hour workday scheduled, but we will be celebrating in style by relaxing in Tennessee for most of the week!
After my first marriage ended in utter failure due to my ongoing battles (losses were more like it..) with depression and abuse issues, I really didn’t plan on getting married again. When I finally started to get serious about taking care of myself and getting mentally healthy again, it wasn’t because I wanted to be a better husband, boyfriend or whatever. In fact, I was doing it as a matter of survival more than anything else at that point. After everything I had been through, suicide attempts, living on the streets, a hospital stay, etc. I knew I was just lucky to be alive. I can see a number of situations, looking back, that could have just as easily ended up with me dead as not. The fact that I, somehow, survived these drove me to try and make sure that I managed to stay out of those situations before my luck ran out!
At the time, my main goal was simply learning to live with myself, let alone living with someone else. I had to go back and learn how to do things that most people learn as children. I had to see my life as worth living, see myself as someone with skills and talents who could live a responsible life. I had to learn how to make decisions, how to see what makes me happy, and give myself the freedom to do that. Most of all I needed to simply live. To accept who I am, and where I’m going, to be happy with nothing but myself.
I learned those lessons and began to put together a decent enough life for myself before I ever met Angela. It wasn’t great, but I learned to be happy with it, to find enjoyment where I could, to be content with myself and my health.
Two years ago, however, I married the woman who had come, at that time, to be my biggest supporter, my best friend, my love. She saw beyond the weaknesses I still struggled with and saw the strength I had used to come this far, she loved me for getting to where I was, she didn’t shun me for not being where others thought I should be. She showed me even more how to enjoy every day, and how to love with reckless abandon by loving me recklessly. She still does to this day, and the last two years have been absolutely the best two years of my life.
I know that, after everything is said and done that I’m lucky to be alive, and I’m lucky to be healthy, and I’m lucky to have the happiness I have in my life today. Most of all, I’m lucky to have someone to share it all with.
Or maybe I’m most lucky because I have a wife who blogs Billie Holiday lyrics for our anniversary? 🙂