Happy anniversary to me (and Charles)

730½ days ago Charles and I took possession of our home. In less than four months I’d met, fallen in love with, wooed, taken home and finally bought a home with Charles. To be honest the house buying was Charles’ idea.

Home ownership wasn’t anything that would’ve occurred to me in my ragged, semi-boho days. For several years I’d lived with Gordon paying half his property tax for rent ($75 a month I think).

The last two years have been rich in incident: variously confused, silly, bleak, mind-fuckingly scary. I can’t lie and not pretend there were times I feared I’d made the worst decision of my life. Those of you who’ve shared the portions of my life I’ve allowed into my Live Journal have had various inklings of that.

Through blind desire, inflamed stubbornness, faith in Charles, crazy hope, and mostly magnificent luck I’ve been rewarded rather than damned. I’m looking back at a long stretch of months when our life together became steadily better.

Not a fairy tale ending, not yet, anyway. If nothing else monetary need is a terror. Parts of our life together have yet to reach perfect harmony. But we can hope with sane confidence to achieve the marriage of true minds.

And there’s the unequivocal delight of being in love and being loved in return. (I think I acquired my addiction to balanced clauses from reading Samuel Johnson in my teen years.)

A long and funny trail. At eighteen I discovered my need for romantic love. By twenty I’d disabused myself of the notion. At twenty-five I thought I’d found it. Come thirty I decided it would be better to die of a heart attack than risk heartache.

Sixteen years later I met Charles.