The Years Start Coming

Today is my husband's 43rd birthday. We met and started dating on his 21st birthday, meaning we have been together now for more than half of his lifetime. I am younger and have already reached this milestone, but it feels somewhat surreal we both have been together longer than we have been apart.

Being together for 22 years makes our early years seem like another lifetime, and yet still like yesterday. Some emotions and flashes of memories are so visceral, so fresh, so poignant, that it seems like no time has passed at all. Walking across the K-State campus in the crisp air in the dead of night as a few stray flurries began to fall. Sitting out on the fire escape at my scholarship house, feeling the thick rise of humidity and the circling mosquitoes as dusk. Viewing the Manhattan community from the top of the Manhattan letters, hearing the buzzing cicadas and the echos of drunken laughter in the distance.

In other ways, though, our time when we were first dating feels distant. I have to squint my eyes and look back at the person I was and wonder if we are the same entity now. I was so overly confident, so insecure, so sure of my opinions and yet so hesitant of my worth. The town of Manhattan has transformed, and it is an odd feeling to live and work again in the same place where we once began our lives together, young and naïve and in love. Even the K-State campus feels entirely different now as a working professional than as a young undergraduate.

Twenty-two years is a long time to be together. Sometimes, I realize that I am holding on to patterns of behavior that I started in those days, some healthy, some not. Other times, I wonder in amazement that our lives have been through as many changes and upheavals and this person beside me is still my best friend. But always, I am forever grateful that we are in this life together. Happy Birthday, Will.