Celebrating 5 Years of Marriage - Has it Been Easy?

Aspen and I recently attended a friend's wedding, and had the pleasure of spending the day with some wonderful people. Amidst the causal getting-to-know-you questions, Aspen and I shared that we are celebrating our 5 year wedding anniversary this month.

We were then met with a real question:

"Has it been easy?"

This honest question deserved a real, honest answer in return. My eyes widened, I laughed out loud, and Aspen and I said "no" in unison. We proceeded to share that I have struggled with mental health my whole life, and it's been a process for both of us learning how to communicate openly.

Just months before Aspen and I married, while we were trying to get pregnant, something started to happen to me internally. My thoughts were all of a sudden unrecognizable to myself, my desires and emotions unexplainable and irrational. I didn't know what was happening, so I sure as hell couldn't put it into words. It didn't feel like just hearing voices. It was like being taken over entirely while being forced to watch and step in sometimes. Incapable of ignoring the new thoughts, new emotions, and new desires, while trying to cling to the life I had. I tried to shove the voices and their desires out of my consciousness; I thought if I ignored them, they would go away. I kept going through the motions of the life I had planned, all the while I was being deceived, by myself.

Aspen and I got married, and shortly after, my walls began crumbling down. Things began to fall apart internally faster than I could catch and put back in place. I had been living in an impenetrable fortress that was somehow now under siege. It was scary. After a couple months of this internal battle, I found myself saying things to my wife that left us both stunned and speechless. In those short months, I experienced some of the most drastic shifts within myself causing drastic shafts in our relationship. I became a completely different person. I moved out the following year, and we nearly got divorced. But then, one day, the thick fog lifted, and I could see clearly. This lifting was just as terrifying as the fog setting in.

My life was in ruins, yet there she was. My wife. Still there with open arms; loving me through it all while giving me the space I needed to find my way home. Safe, held & free.

We did not experience the passionate honeymoon period that many newlyweds revel in before settling into a new life together. Aspen vowed to love me through sickness and health, and was put to the test right out the gate, thrown into the thick of it. The guilt and shame that I carry with me, atop my mountain of trauma, is a burden I wish on no one. I didn't understand what was happening to me then, but I understand it now.

Trauma can rear it's head when and where you least expect it, even decades later, and it affects the ones we love most. It can make the best of us turn into someone unrecognizable. It can make us do things that we don't understand, speaking and acting in ways we never imagined.

I feel incredibly fortunate to be married to a woman who loves me unconditionally, through all of life's unknowns. To be married to someone I can share my inner world with transparently while being encouraged to explore my feelings and heal wholeheartedly is beyond priceless. Relationships crumble and fall because sharing our inner world or inner knowing can be terrifying; not knowing if the other person can handle our reality, truth, or knowing causes many to keep it hidden. The first years of my marriage showed me that a healthy marriage is possible when both people truly commit to one another, and lean into the discomfort, knowing that sometimes you have to let go in order to hold on.

To my beautiful wife, my partner in life, my love:

Though trauma continues to set my world on fire time and time again, I know that you'll be there on the other side every time I emerge from the flames. Struggling with mental health isn't a choice, but loving someone is. Thank you for loving me fiercely through it all. Thank you for being you. Your strength and bravery, and capacity for love and understanding is truly a gift. My wish for anyone struggling with mental health is that they'll find a partner as wonderful and supportive as you, someone who makes them feel safe in sharing what seems unshareable and unspeakable. Thank you, my love, for showing me that I can be real and still be loved. On days when I become weary and hopeless, wanting to give up, I am reminded of the unconditional love you have gifted me with day in and day out. Unconditional love deserves unconditional effort. Here's to the next 5 years of our marriage. May they be filled with challenges to overcome, insights to uncover, conversations to explore, adventures to be had, memories to be made, progress to be noticed, and milestones to be celebrated.

What I know without a doubt is this: You and me, we can do hard things.