25 Year Anniversary
Yesterday was our 25 year anniversary.
Not marriage. Not being together. Nothing super conventional to most, and most definitely not the easiest thing to explain to people.
No, it's more blog centric to be honest. 25 years ago yesterday S signed my guestbook. This is what she said:
Jul 24th 2001
”Just thought I'd check out your diary and website, seeing as you so kindly signed my guestbook. It's pretty good to have a local diary to read on here. Usually so damned Americanised...no offence to the Americans of course.. Anyway, thought your site was neat, and I think I'll keep checking out your diary..”
This lead us to reading each others blogs (known as diaries back then). Mine would have been full of random day to day stuff mixed in with the ramblings of a person happy to be in an online relationship with someone else. S would have been talking about struggles with mental health, being a new single mum and writing dark and thoughtful poetry to get through tough days.
Comments in guestbooks would go to and fro. MSN Messenger entered the communication channels at some point, and sending messages via cellphones or phone calls would have been in the mix.
Life carried on for both of us. We floated in and out of contact. Usually dependent on if I was seeing someone or not.
I probably had more random bullshit stories than anyone should probably need to hear about. S knew pretty much everything, I realised she became my best friend.
Our time frames for other things start to get hazy.
I'm going to say at some point around 14 years ago, I said I was going to meet S, I had flights booked, time off of work and it was time to meet someone in person, face to face.
Meeting people off of the internet can be daunting. But if you've spent the time getting to know them, combined with technology where you can video call people, it's not that scary.
So we met. Hung out. Had a great time.
Whatever we had morphed and we became a thing. A long distance relationship due to children and not wanting to uproot and move things. We joke that we didn't want to rush things.
I'm not sure how it would have played out if we had met up a lot sooner. Maybe it was always supposed to work like this. Maybe I needed the bullshit relationships to recognise the good ones.
So around 7 years of long distance started. Lots of calls, messages and visits. It wasn't too bad. We both had things on, both respected each other and somehow it worked.
On one trip we were staying in some apartment for a change. It was in walking distance of a Denny's. I'm known for calling a restaurant meal a business meeting. So we had one. It was time to make big life decisions. S was going to pack up her life and move to where I was.
Planning was well underway. Then life throwed a spanner in the works.
Her dad got sick suddenly. It wasn't looking good. I flew down there super early the next morning. I was there at the hospital next to S when he passed. Just another reminder how short life can be. It was tough.
Scheduling of movers, travel and what was happening carried on.
I flew down. Then we drove for 2 days back up here. Things weren't ideal. We had another passenger with us we didn't think would be coming. We were moving into where I was staying which was average at best, and we got all of her belongings delivered to my parents for storage.
We had to find a new place eventually, we moved everyone to where we are now. Kicked some people out. Some others left.
And here we are. 25 years later, living together.
There are ups and downs, but nothing major. You have to understand that how someone is one day could be for any number of reasons, none of which are your fault.
I have to stop somedays and realise how lucky I am. Lucky that this person cares for me so much. Has supported me through bad, good and random things. For over half of my life they have been there in some way.
To celebrate I got a 10 flavor cake. It's made up of 10 slices of different cakes. So far it's not too bad. Will have some more tomorrow.