Three Cheers for Three Years

My third wedding anniversary would be in six days.

Yippie

In anticipation of this event, I will tell you both how I spent the previous two wedding anniversaries, and how I will spend this one (although I haven’t fully committed to anything yet)

Year One: There was much discussion about what we would do for our first wedding anniversary, after all, this was the first one! We wanted it to be special. We decided to go to SoHo Jazz Club in Addison, Texas and enjoy a night of good food, drinks, music and most of all-each other’s company. We got a babysitter (which was a big deal since we didn’t know many people), got dressed up and headed out.

It was a beautiful night. We reminisced at how far we had come in the last year, how at this time the year before, we had just moved into an empty apartment and had to go buy air mattresses and bed-in-a-bag from WalMart because the Army had lost our furniture. How we ate off of paper plates at a card table and now we were dining at one of the nicest restaurants in town. We laughed about it and toasted to the years to come.

…the years.

One year.

A young couple, clearly on a first date, was seated next to us. We leaned in over our after-dinner coffee and whispered about how cute and nervous they both seemed, remembering that not so long ago, we were very much the same.

Year Two: We had just started getting over a rough patch. All throughout May we fought terribly and Sean threw out “divorce”. A month later we got a weekend sitter and took some much-needed time for the two of us at the Omni hotel in Dallas. On the first night we went to Bob’s Steak and Chop House inside the hotel. Sean had duck and I had filet mignon, we both declared that it was the best meal we’d ever eaten. The restaurant gave us complementary champagne for celebrating our anniversary. We enjoyed days by the pool, drinking, napping and talking. Sitting at the hotel bar discussing his book and walking through downtown Dallas. We finished off the weekend with lunch at famous Dallas BBQ joint, The Pecan Lodge, and then saw Wonder Woman. We talked the entire way home about both the food,the movie and how much we enjoyed the weekend away with one another. It was exactly what our marriage needed to take the next step to get back to where it was before and over the next few months we found that the wounds of the past had healed.

This Year: Technically, I’m not married anymore. But I still feel married, I still wear my ring, I still call him “my husband” depending on who I’m talking to. So, I have made a list of possible activities to celebrate, or rather, commemorate.

1. Put on a black veil, go to his grave and cry.
2. Fuck the veil, go to his grave and tell him what a POS he is for leaving me and our children.
3. Put on my wedding dress, finish the liter of wine in my fridge and blog
4. Write hate mail that I’ll never send
5. Lay in bed with my infant daughter, sob, and apologize profusely to her for choosing a father that would kill himself before she was even born (this isn’t special though, I do this frequently)
6. Pretend that today is just like any other day and suffocate my emotions.