Our 24th Wedding Anniversary is TOMORROW, so I'm going to skip the morbid for a few days (mostly) and write some lovey dovey mushy stuff to celebrate instead <3 We are both in a very busy month right now, so I'm not sure how much actual celebrating we'll do on the actual date, but I definitely want to put some attention on it.

I may use this theme as part of my Positivity Challenge or something, because I can tell you, after 24 years of marriage, I have a lot to be thankful for. <3 In trying to find photos for this post (and tomorrow's Anniversary post) I kept finding more and more and more photos that illustrate the things I love about this man. He is amazing. The main bad thing about him is that he doesn't see how absolutely incredible he is.

Anyway, this is kind of a "Throwback Thursday" post from a year ago. I am sharing it to kind of show you just a hint of this man that I married 24 years ago tomorrow. I asked this question on facebook and I thought I would ask it here as well.

"How would you describe/explain romantic love to someone who has never experienced it?"

My husband Patrick (aka @serapium) responded before I put my answer down:

Patrick:

When I met you, it was (and still is) the only time I've ever experienced what most people refer to when they say 'romantic love' or 'true love'.

To this day, going on three decades later, I still get butterflies in my stomach when I think on it.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I had been lost in a desert and I was on the brink of dying of thirst. Just seeing you, being close to you, was like a large glass of crystal clear ice water that suddenly quenched the thirst that I never knew I had.

Beyond being incredibly shocking emotionally and intellectually, there was a physical response that I really can't describe well. It was as if someone had a giant hook threaded through my intestines and was pulling me towards you. It wasn't painful (like a hook would be), but the pressure... the NEED... to be close to you was undeniable.

I've always pictured us as opposite ends of a magnet. We're part of the same piece. Part of a whole that is greater than the sum of our parts. We're opposites, but the attraction is just part of the law of physics. It just is, as it has always been, and as it will always be.

Without you I am lost, adrift, and have no way to control even the smallest elements of the world around me.

Loving you has brought more into my life than I knew existed. It has fundamentally changed the way that I look at the world, the people in it, and my opinions on the way the universe works. Yes, being with you does truly have cosmic level ramifications for me. You shattered my world, and together we put the world back together the way we wanted it.

True love? Romantic love? That's what we have. It's when you know, in the depths of your soul, that as long as you are together everything else in the entire universe will be okay.

Byn:

My experience with Patrick (we met at 19,) was...I would describe, the most intense, first parts of falling in love for ME more like... Everything felt like I was seeing it through new eyes, with better vision. My skin longed for a touch, even when it didn't before. I remember saying (often) that it felt like I was walking on clouds, because after years of heaviness, my heart felt so light that it surely had to be lifting me up. I felt like I was surrounded in an aura of bliss, even when real life bullshit cropped up. It was honestly kind of unbelievable to me at the time.

That was 26, almost 27 years ago.

Now that we've been married for almost 24 years... we've had our ups and downs, obviously. But right now, at this point (and most of the time over the last decades), love feels like... we're magnets. When we're apart, there is just always that part of me that is constantly feeling the tug of him and wanting to be with him/near him. When we're together, that 'magnet' just feels stronger and I can't get close enough.

Being apart makes me notice all the ways in which (cheesiness) he 'completes me' because he has supported me in so many things for the last 2 1/2 decades that I rely on him for it. He's like an extra... subconsciousness or something. Its really hard to describe that part, but he is definitely my other half. He is my rock when I need one, and I like to think that I'm that for him when he needs it (at least most of the time).

Fair Warning: I am definitely going to write about this man/our marriage over the next week. It is a happy focus for me and being grateful is something I can never get enough of.

If you're interested in more of our story, these are the posts we wrote around Valentine's day about how we met. Patrick/@serapium and I sat down one afternoon and without discussing it, we each wrote our version of the night we met sooooo long ago!