In college, I met a man who was smart and sarcastic and aloof and it wasn't instant but it also wasn't very long before I became incredibly attracted to him. For far too many months, I weaved myself in and out of his life and allowed myself to be treated just horribly by him.
I believed him when he told me he cared about me and would be with me if he could—and all of his reasons for not being with me made quite a bit of sense to the girl who would have nodded along emphatically to anything he said, even if it had all been in French.
I saved every IM conversation we shared during that time, and every once in a while, I go back over them and allow myself to cringe at the desperation and the sadness dripping off every word I wrote.
I know what everyone says about regret: how it's utterly pointless, how every event—large, small, devastating, joyful—carries us to this moment, where we're exactly where we should be. Blah blah uplifting blah. I can't buy it. We're human; we regret that last tequila shot, the way we treated our mothers from ages 14-18, the second helping at the pizza buffet. And, oh yes, I regret Matt.
Eventually it became too much for me, and I began to break down and demand answers from him and he immediately shut me out. The last time I ever spoke to him was on Halloween 2003, when I had been left by my ride at a bar, and I had sent him a text message to see if he would pick me up and give me a ride home. He responded with, "Never talk to me again." He had met someone else, and that was that.
Just over a month later I walked into a bar, and I locked eyes with Mike and sat next to him, oddly nervous. And—although I obviously couldn't have known the magnitude of it all then—my life changed that night. I haven't been the same since.
Mike is stubborn and he's unromantic and he genuinely didn't care when Veronica Mars got booted from the CW line-up and he also goes to Molly before he comes to me when he gets home each night. He's flawed and frustrating and he insists on asking me questions when I'm clear across the house, forcing me to pause whatever great song I'm in the middle of listening to or whatever General Hospital moment I'm entrenched in. And he can't fold a load of laundry to SAVE HIS LIFE.
And yet that night—in that bar, when it all shifted—when he put my Red-Bull-and-Vodkas on his bar tab and let me borrow his phone to make a call, I met a man who would help me, slowly and scarily, become the woman I was meant to be. The woman my mother saw when she looked at me as a child; the woman my encouraging friends would try to convince me I could be. I met a man who would show me just how horribly sad it was to think anyone could care about me who wouldn't be interested in hearing about my day, who wouldn't be worried when I drive in bad weather, who wouldn't care about my career successes or who wouldn't find me just hilarious when I make the dog talk.
My husband didn't "fix" or "save" me, but he did help me to see that any man who could leave me on a street corner isn't worth the time it takes to regret something but is, quite understandably, regrettable all the same.
Ten months ago I married a man who would never leave me in need, who would never degrade me, who will never be a regret, not in any way. I met and married a man—not by definition but by embodiment.
Happy ten months, Michael.
(I've thought about posting a blog one day about my actual wedding and how effing fantastic it was, but can we just take a moment and admire that flower arch? It was such a beautiful part of the day and, damn, if it wouldn't fit in my suitcase. And, my wedding colors were brown and PURPLE; are you dying of shock?)