May 6, 2018: Marriage: Year One
To begin this post I wanted to thank everyone who has been taking my survey about what they wanted to hear about. Many of you voted for “My first year as a wife”, so here goes my story!
Stetson and I are coming up on our first year anniversary in July. This day last year was our college graduation day that was spent with both of our families, celebrating the success that we both had accomplished. Two months later we got married, and a week after that we moved 14 hours away. We jumped into a new life as if we had done it 15 times before. The move was easy, we were well prepared, extremely excited, and a bit out of our minds. Which in my opinion, are the ingredients for the success.
For those who know me, know that I am not the type of person to cook, clean, go grocery shopping, do dishes, make my bed, the list could go on; but for some reason I was ready to take that all on in my new role. In the same way where he wanted to provide for me I wanted to ensure this new chapter was seamless and comfortable. I found myself meal planning, scheduling bill payments, sweeping floors, and cleaning windows; which yes, is a huge achievement for me!
About a month into the move, we finally had a schedule down and could find the grocery store without GPS. We found that we had downtime and felt as if something was missing. So, we decided to adopt a cat -- I was clearly still out of my mind with that decision.
We were very excited to form our own traditions, including but not limited to weekend living room slumber parties (which is something I cherish from my childhood, sleeping in the living room with my family all night watching boxing matches and eating popcorn) to taco night every week. We quickly found ourselves coming home and sharing our successes or failures of the day and realized we both lived very different lives for the first time in our relationship. Previously, we were both always going to school, always had homework, always had to take exams and finals. Now, he is reading and writing constantly and I am teaching science to a handful of students. We found our way to communicate and to each be one anothers cheerleader. Mine mostly consists of listening to him talk about Dawes Allotment Act and Lake Mohonk Conferences and his letting me vent and stress about lesson planning. With all of this in mind, it seems like this first year has flown by. We’ve established ourselves in our professional fields, connected with new people (shout out to my stellar teachers), and found our little niche in central Illinois.
I sit here trying to think of what to say about my first year of marriage and can only come up with the fact that it was nothing short of what I expected my life to be with Stetson. Many people say that the first year of marriage is the hardest and that moving away was only going to be more trying. I remember being told from my cousin, that through all of this we would learn how to rely on each other more than we imagined. Don’t get me wrong Stetson and I went through difficult circumstances and changes this year but our marriage is always the easiest thing about our life. Starting a life together, a PhD program, a new profession, confronting loss, finding a new place to call home, but sharing it with him is the easiest part of it all.
Throughout this year the constant question I hear from my best of friends to new aquatiences is “How is married life?” My immediate response is always, “unreal”. It has been unreal in many ways. First, unreal that I married my best friend. Unreal that we have had to deal with some of the hardest loses in our lives this far. Unreal, the amount of support we have both near and far. Unreal that it seems like we are stronger than ever. So this post goes out to you, Stet. Thanks for the constant support, the unconditional love, and taking on this adventure with me. Happy (almost) 1 year of marriage. Let’s do 80 more.
Topic for next post:
The girl who changed my first year of teaching.