This is my love story

Does your life have a before and after like mine does? For me my before is the time I lived without knowing my husband and my after is the time I have known him.

My memory of the first time I ever saw my husband, Erik, is vivid. It feels like my brain recorded a clip and I’m able to bring it anytime I wish to revisit it. I was a 16-year-old hostess at a restaurant and he was 17, one of the line cooks. The front doors opened, and I saw him come jogging in. He was wearing a red hat with his blonde hair peeking out and I saw his eyes. They were the perfect mix of blue and green. I told my friend who was bussing a table I was going to marry him one day. She laughed and shook her head. “Girl, you’re crazy!” I’m used to people thinking I’m weird. 

I was in the break room eating a banana for our first conversation. He walked in and asked me how I was doing as he hung up his coat. I smiled and told him I was doing just fine. We smiled at each other like idiots. Well, I was shoveling a banana into my mouth. 

A friendship began brewing, and I found myself captivated by his presence. Butterflies in my stomach each time we talked, or he offered to drive me home from work. Any excuse to be around him, would do. Just hanging out became a relationship. I was head over heels in love. I doodled his name on all of my notebooks and my smile stretched wide whenever I was near him.

We talked for hours about anything and everything. I loved how passionately he talked about his family and how prepared he was for his future. He came across older than being a senior in high school. Erik and I were only seperated by a year difference in age, but his maturity felt advanced. I loved the way he smiled and the silly jokes he told me. This was the first time I felt safe around someone of the opposite sex. Love drunk, in the unique way only teenagers get, I was convinced we were soul mates who were going to get married. 

As the school year came to a close, so did our relationship. It wasn’t a monster breakup. He didn’t cheat, and I didn’t lie. He was older and his life was on a different trajectory than my own. Heart crushed that I was in love and he wasn’t. Like Allie from the film The Notebook, I cried over him every single night for months. Writing long letters to him I never sent, pouring my pain out through pen and paper. I wrote short romance stories where he was the star of every single one. With no desire to move on, I hung onto the belief we would find our way back to each other. 

A couple of months into my senior year, I started dating someone else. We went together like toothpaste and orange juice. It was a volatile relationship. During that time, I was still friends with Erik, but I kept the horrible details of my chaotic relationship hidden.

After being cheated on and attacked for confronting him, I knew I had to get out of this relationship. Shame hung over me for the way I allowed him to treat me. I was sitting in my bedroom, crying and wishing I was brave enough to tell someone what was going on in my life, when my phone rang. It was Erik. We talked for hours and I told him everything that was going on in my imitation of a relationship.

That was the night he told me he was about to sign up for the Marines. My heart stopped. I had always imagined we would eventually find our way back to each other. It was a hope I had held onto during our 3 years of friendship. We talked every day for two months after I removed the poison from my life. I healed and focused on my future. One night on the phone, he talked about how he imagined settling down and having children in a few years. Surprised that he admitted this, I confessed that if we got married, I would want to have a son with him because I wanted a boy just like him. He said he wanted to see me again before he officially signed up for the Marines. Spoiler alert: He did see me but he never signed up.

It was Memorial day weekend when we met up in person for the first time in over a year. I was nervous but felt so excited because I knew this time, we were both walking into this with our heads on and we were going line-by-line and page by page. We spent the entire weekend together, and by the end, we were back together. We fell asleep talking and as he was drifting asleep, I whispered to him “I have always loved you, please do not respond but I want you to know that.”

Our relationship felt fast to everyone but us. We started planning our future and enjoyed every second of each other’s company. For us, it felt natural, like we were both where we wanted to be. It was like finding a missing piece of yourself you had been looking for, a sense of completion. The one-year anniversary of our weekend together, found us as husband and wife expecting our first baby. We now have four children. Two girls and two boys. Our journey hasn’t been smooth. We have hit a few rough patches and survived stormy weather, but we’ve always had each other. His love has been my anchor, holding me steady throughout the years. And I can’t imagine life without him.