The last 5 and the next…
Five years. I don’t know why, but that feels like A Big One. Our five year anniversary was on Friday. We made a point to drive in to Charleston a bit early so we could grab lunch at one of our favorite restaurants (King Street Grille, in case you’re wondering).
I wore a white dress, though a bit more casual than the one I wore on that day five years earlier. He ordered a beer. I ordered a glass of cab. And while we waited for our food, we talked.
A lot’s happened in these five years, huh? We realized that living in Athens felt like a lifetime ago. How is it possible it was only five years ago?
My one goal for the next five years? To move only once. Since our wedding day, we’ve moved five times. Raleigh to Athens. Athens to Charlotte. Switched houses in Charlotte. Charlotte to Buies Creek. Buies Creek back to Charlotte. I’m exhausted.
Our last five years have looked pretty much how you’d expect the first five years of any marriage to look. I will say I think we’ve had an unfair serving of tough times, but for the most part we’ve spent the last five years learning. We’ve stepped and stumbled trying to find our footing. We’ve fought and made up. We’ve shared some losses. We’ve made friends and lost a few. We started new traditions and revived some old ones. All the while, carefully weaving our lives together, creating an unbreakable bond.
To think our next five years could be as eventful as the last is an exhausting thought. When we stood together on that altar, holding hands, listening to the priest speak about the future and what marriage would mean, we had no idea, friends. We were young and in love, and that’s all we knew. We had no money. We had no real plans. We had no clue. And while there are moments from the last five years I’d rather keep hidden between the pages of my paper journal, there is a overwhelming sense of accomplishment here.
It might seem silly, feeling accomplished for making it this far. Marriage is and will always be hard. But I feel like the first five years are pivotal. Especially if you get married as young as we did. We’ve done a lot of growing up. We are most certainly not the same people we were back then. And there are many couples who just don’t make it through that. Add in the amount of crap we’ve had thrown at us, lost opportunities, countless moves, new jobs, losing jobs, sickness, just to give you a taste, and sometimes I can’t believe we wake up each day ready to face whatever comes our way.
But he makes me laugh. And we always come out on the other side of whatever life tosses in our direction closer than we were before. We are a united front.
And if you asked me what I think the next five years will look like, I’d laugh and say who knows. Because that’s the truth. I saw none of this life coming. You can make all the plans in the world, but your life will unfold before your very eyes.
So in the next five years, my only hope is that we still face things as a united front, ready for whatever comes our way. Oh, and that we only move once. If at all.
That’s doable. Right?
