Tomorrow is mine and my husband's anniversary.
We're weirdos who don't usually celebrate these things but this one is significant...as it is the twentieth and that is a long time.
Doesn't feel that long, but it also feels like we've always been together, if that makes any sense that isn't romantic mush.
So I feel the need to mention it.
Neither of us were in good places when we met. The details are best left unspoken as they are rife with abuse, betrayal and trauma I'd rather not relive. But we met and he saved me. He'd say I saved him too, but he's the one who chased despite being told I wasn't worth the trouble and he'd be better off with literally anyone else.
We were nineteen and twenty when we started dating, so at the end of the teens, and neither one were the other's 'first' anything. Not highschool sweethearts or star-crossed lovers or whathaveyou. Just two people who found each other at the right time for them.
We've been together ever since, changed a bit over the years but for the better I think. We're forty years old now, well me forty and he forty-one but semantics, and our life is monetarily garbage but otherwise we're happy and just as in love as we ever were. More, I'd wager, for all we've been through together.
I wanted to circle this into writing and say my relationship colors how I write relationships, but it doesn't really. Not exactly. There's the easy devotion, the trust some don't quite understand, and the preference for little intimacies over grand gestures... but overall I write what feels natural for the characters more than what feels natural for me.
I would go absolutely insane if I had to deal with someone like Lucient, for instance. Or Ludovico, actually. They are too much and work well on the page but in real life would be nightmares. Fun to write though. Love to spend time with them so much I want to do nothing else...but I have so much else to write and they require a lot more logistical work than that so much else to get published.
Twenty years is a long time, but if writing obsessively in love immortal idiots taught me anything it is that time is relative and even centuries can pass in the blink of an eye if they're comfortable and happy enough.
I'm certainly not banking on centuries, but I hope I get at least twenty more years with my husband, who is quite possibly the closest friend I've ever had and certainly the only human being I can imagine spending forever with.
Okay, there was my sap for the year. I hope you enjoyed it.
