34 Years Later…This is Us.

 

 

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. – Anais Nin

 

We said “I do” on a rainy Saturday morning in September and together we stepped into the future. Two young kids holding hands with no idea what that future looked like. It started off as a fairy tale, as most young marriages do. Good jobs, a new house, soon two beautiful sons. The fairy tale deepened into a romance novel as life got bigger. A cross-country move, a new start-up company and a career in emergency services. Mortgage payments, college tuitions and watching parents get sick and die turned pages into chapters and turned days into years.

The plot twisted and thickened a bit as most middle-aged marriages do. Ups and downs, hurts and disappointments, laughter and tears. Our family ebbed and flowed as sons grew up to be young men, leaving the state and starting their own lives, their own loves, a beautiful grandson. But something was missing, something was wrong, the script had to be rewritten….so we changed the storyline. We went with the truth.

Six years ago my husband started the process of transitioning to a woman. He no longer could survive in this world living a lie and today is a beautiful, caring, fun-loving, compassionate woman. Fear, angst, doubt weaved through the weeks and months as we together transformed our marriage. No guidebook, no direction and at times no support left us on our own to figure it out. And every night we laid in bed and held hands knowing that no matter what we loved each other as much as we did the day we said “I do” on that rainy September day when we were two young kids holding hands with no idea what that future looked like. Love won out.

Today this is us. Not a fairy tale, or a romance novel but a love story. A love story that will only stop when “til death do us part” but will continue to be held and cherished forever.

I love you.