The day I married Chief, I felt sick to my stomach. I felt, literally, like vomiting. I felt like a tiger about to be caged. I didn't have all those dreamy, musically sappy emotions that so many people seem to experience. I didn't want to get married. I wanted to be married, but not actually take the step of entering into it. I had no dreams of relinquishing my life, my heart, my self to another human being. So what I had imagined my wedding to be, ended up not happening at all. The truth is that it was an awful day. Sounds funny to write that, but it's true. My wedding day completely sucked. Hated the dress. Hated the church. Hated the rush of it all. Hated pretty much everything about it. Except two things: 1. I married the greatest man I've ever known and 2. my dad made me feel so safe, so brave, in what was probably the scariest moment in my life at the time.
I knew that being married would be tough. I knew Chief better than anyone else, well before I was willing to marry him. I knew that he knew me. I always had the belief that two people should enter into a permanent union with their eyes wide open. They should know the good, the bad, and the ugly before they decide whether or not til death do they part. I held nothing back. I didn't participate in the ridiculous mating rituals of "I'll show you my good side". I always thought that was stupid (I still do, by the way). How can someone adequately assess if the promise is really a good idea if they don't know the real you!?
He knew I didn't want to get married. He knew I was a flight risk. He knew it so well that he knew to spend time with me the day of our wedding (collective GASP!) right before the ceremony (double gasp!). He knew I just had to get through the promise. (I feel it necessary to add, for history's sake, that he threatened the tar out of me too... I will never talk to you again!!! He clearly was nervous I would bail again...) It was like standing at the edge of the lake waiting to join the Polar Bear Club (yes, I'm a member). You're standing there staring in to the water and you feel like your heart is in your chest. You have these self protecting notions screaming so loud you can barely think: get the hell out of here!!! but you have this other part that says I can do this. I want to do this. I know I can rock this. And no, I'm not referring to the wedding day. I'm referring to the relationship. I knew I was made for Chief. I knew he was made for me. There wasn't a doubt in my mind. Not even a slight doubt. Chief and I were meant to be.
I was standing in the hallway, waiting to go down the aisle to the dude that was going to rock my world, staring ahead at the plunge. My brain was screaming at me to run away... Marriages don't work. What married people do you know that are happy? You're doomed to repeat the mistakes of your parents. You can't handle being alone. What on earth makes you think you can handle a soldier? And then my Dad cut through the internal screaming: "Are you ready?" He must have sensed that I was contemplating running out of the church. He said "If you don't want to do this we will walk out of this church right now and NO ONE will say anything to you." I laughed. (He always makes me laugh when I most need to) "No Dad. He's the one. I'm just scared." He said: "We'll do it together. I've got you."
And with that, we linked arms and walked down the aisle: I made the plunge. With that I let go of my very life, and gave it to someone else. With that I erased my name, and the disappointments that went along with it, and merged my very self to something new.
Now, years later (I am battled scarred, after all... haha) I can say that the pictures I envisioned of my adult life were nothing close to what my life is actually like. How could I have ever imagined something as amazing as all this?
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