195- A happy memory

Day 4 of B's #30dayblogchallenge : a happy memory. 

My life has been rather full of sad ones, but in spite of that I can still find some happier moments, days, even periods during which I felt better, if not always the most content. 



The singular, happier day of my life is my wedding day - now over a decade behind.

What makes it so special ? This marriage was against all odds. 

• First, I thought I was too damaged from my traumatic past to ever meet friends, yet along someone I could ever imagine marriage with. 
• Also, I didn't believe in the institution of marriage - both religious and civil unions appeared to me as scams and the only image I had of it all was that of domestic violence, strife, disagreements, and the only outcomes were all negative.

Yet, we met online, became friends and developed mutual feelings. Even the user-made chat room we met in was shut down like all other yahoo chat rooms, only months after we were put in touch via a mutual friend... 

We eventually met in person and confirmed that we had indeed fallen in love and this led to our wedding day itself. 

I can still vividly recall the bustle of the night before : 

• In excitement and fatigue, we worked together the final wording of our vows  and later my wife finished her dress in the wee hours of the morning, long after I'd fallen asleep.
• With very little sleep, we got up very early that morning ; after getting dressed, we had a private ceremony of our own creation, in my mum's kitchen. This was our actual wedding, the one we felt most important. 
• It was an intellectual coming of minds - a non religious, yet spiritual bond that we made up on our own, with no real outside model for it. 
• It was a marriage of two geeks who met online.
• It was a marriage of love, mutual respect and proclamation of our originality, in the face of normalcy 

Less than 2 hours later, we were in city hall for our civil union - a ceremony we took partially because my wife isn't french and that she would've otherwise had been limited by a tourist visa. We already knew that we wanted to live together, so the decision for this civil union sooner rather than later meant spending more time together, and not apart. 

After the ceremony, we left the office, out to city hall gardens, where just a couple minutes later, it started to lightly snow. The fluttering was so cute, a beautiful moment to walk together toward the car and back home. 

What makes it happy is that against all odds, I did find a person who wanted to be with me, accepting me as I was and making me feel like I wasn't actually too damaged. That part was just a bad mind construct of mine and I learned that it was also possible to be loved by another before I learned to love myself more than I had before. 

What makes it happy, is spending the day with all those butterflies of excitement that I did something right in my life, taking control and deciding for myself who I wanted to be with. 

And ever since, that day and everything that led to it are part of my best year of life. 

Now, I cannot imagine my life without my wife, and it shows that anything's possible. 

More about the challenge in my intro. Remember, I didn't create it, but B did.