eight and c o u n t i n g

Every year around this time, I start to get nostalgic about the previous years leading up to the current celebration of my (ours - mine and josh's, really) anniversary. The longer we've been together, it's a little more bizarre each time to pull back the layers and look back at how we began as a couple, how we fell in love, and how it's evolved since then. To look at how we were at the beginning side-by-side with who we are now, at face value there's precious little left of the younger version. But as I said...pulling back the layers, spending some time with our thoughts, memories, pictures...you can see we're still in there, just a well developed, fine-tuned version.

Next Tuesday we celebrate our 8th anniversary together. And I still love the guy. And since he tells me and I feel it to be true everyday, he still loves me too. We get to be one of the lucky ones, to have found a partner who is 100% compatible. Of course we share our differences as much as our similarities, but the things that separate us actually help us grow as people, become more tolerant, patient and kind. Is it annoying that he leaves a trail of crumbs behind him? Sure...but I own a vacuum cleaner. Does he get frustrated whenever I'm absent-minded about paying bills or driving like a maniac in traffic? Damn straight he does. But he respects me and we make adjustments in our way of life so everyone is comfortable and happy.

He puts up with my obsession with Christmas between the months of July and January every year, and I listen patiently when he gets on his soap-box about [insert current event/controversy here]. We snuggle on the couch and watch Food Network together, go to bed early on weekends, and have fun driving absurd distances in the middle of nowhere for a beach vacation getaway. He takes my calls when I get lost and freak out on the phone; I am equally as patient when he suffers multiple nights without sleep and frustrating days at work. I stub my toe across the apartment and scream bloody murder and he flees to my side as if I had been fatally wounded; I cook him homemade food to alleviate having to rely on fast food and take out. I tell him everything. I'm his best friend. We love our cats like they are our children...except with tails and fur. He loves his family and respects his parents; he gets my family since they are so like his own.

He's watched me go from angry mistrusting punk 18-year old girl to calmer-than-necessary fairly confident 26-year old woman. I fell in love with a scrawny purple-haired and pierced introvert and stayed in love as he became a man who works hard to achieve his dreams and wants to befriend the world. He wrote a song about me when I lived in NY. I daydream about him when my thoughts are quiet.

Our favorite part of any given day is when we collapse into bed and climb under the covers where we can shut out the world and snuggle until sleep claims us.

I don't know what the next eight years will bring...but whatever it does...it can't take away the last eight. And I'm ok with that.

I love you for as long as I am meant to...here's to love, to us, and being pretty g-damn happy.

Lauren