Three-Year Anniversary

June 5, 2010 - 1:53 AM

Collin and I have actually been together for three years. Can you believe that?

Here we are, about to embark on our lives, and still we are madly in love.

We were eighteen when we met in math class at Portland Community College. It was five days before his nineteenth birthday, when we decided to call each other each other's.

He would come to my house and have dinner with my family because I wasn't allowed to be alone with him.

That summer, we took a couple of classes at PCC, and he worked as a knife salesman for Cutco. My dad bought his then-girlfriend a beautiful set of Cutco knives, and helped Collin make the commission he needed to take me to movies.

It was three months later that I would go to Oregon and four months later that Collin and I decided that we wanted to be together for the rest of our lives.

The following nine months were filled with weekend visits and nightly telephone calls. My friends would look down their noses at me for leaving social engagements to take Collin's calls, but even then I knew that my friends had never and may never know a love like his and mine.

From the beginning it was deep and beautiful, youthful and mature at the same time. It was founded on real chemistry and sweetness of heart. He helped me become acclimated to living life post-rehab, and I helped him get sober. We developed jokes and on-going conversations that would keep us interested hour after hour.

We spent another summer together after my first year at Oregon madly in love, growing closer and more mature. We turned 20 that summer. I had a job as a reporter for a small newspaper in Camas, Washington, and a part-time job as a sales girl at Charlotte Russe in Lloyd Center in Portland. He worked at Hollywood Video, and when we finally had a second to breathe, we would go to the Hoyt Arboretum, the Saturday Market, or just stay home and watch movies in each other's arms.

That fall, Collin would return to Oregon with me and start his major in psychology. That term, I was very busy and developed an anxiety problem. Even though I was steadily becoming less sane, Collin stood by me and held me while I cried. When I realized that I was terrorizing both Collin and myself by trying to be successful, I sat down with him and devised a plan to make us happier again.

That was one of the first times that I realized just how important Collin was to me and how happy we were together.

The rest of that year, things got better and Collin and I prepared for a summer apart.

I had been offered an opportunity to work at a political consulting firm with a friend of the family, and Collin had applied to study in Argentina.

In no time at all, we were sitting in vastly different parts of the world on the telephone telling each other how desperately we wanted to feel each other's warm touch. But before we knew it, Collin was in Sacramento, visiting me while I was finishing my internship.

Finally, we were back here at Oregon, and we found ourselves in love again. That was nine months ago. This year has been magnificent. He and I took up cooking, started watching new shows, fostered a puppy for three months, and hit a few bumps in the road.

This year, Collin did some things that would make many girls leave him in a heartbeat.

And I thought about it.

But one thing I have believed in since I graduated from rehab about the right way to live is to stay committed no matter what.

I truly believe that most marriages fail because people are self-indulged overgrown six-year-olds motivated my immediate gratification. I also truly believe that my life will be fullest if I live it married to Collin.

I will never forget the first time Collin put these into the perfect combination of words.

We were tumbling through an argument and wrapping it up. We were talking about how our love is stronger than any silly quarrel that we could have on any given day, and that the bigger arguments will only make our love stronger. That was when he said: "I feel like we have already taken our vows."
It was beautiful.

We are 21, coming dangerously close to 22, but does that mean that it is too early to love endlessly?

For better or worse? In sickness and in health? AS LONG as we both shall live?

We've had better, and we've had worse, but at the end of every day, I feel honored, privileged, and grovelingly thankful to have such a beautiful, wonderful human being to love with all of my heart-selflessly, forever.