No great love was perfect

When I remember my marriage to Alan, the memories I have come from all the pictures we captured in our love story. True love stories have joy and sadness so I can’t really paint the entire picture of our marriage with just happy pictures. Who posts or takes pictures of the arguments or the jealous outbursts or the crying and the cursing? I know we never did and even so, we would never share it with the world. Alan and I kept private the personal struggles we had in our marriage, but after he died the universe gave a key to that door that was closed and everyone took turns walking in. It wasn’t fair to his memory or to the lives of my children and I didn’t feel it necessary to try to explain to anyone the details of our personal life. Still, it hurt no less to hear what assumptions were made about me or my decisions and what bits and pieces people heard to try to piece together their own judgement about me and our life. We were never perfect. When Alan and I first met, we fell so in love with each other. Trying to keep our hands off each other proved useless after a day of work of not seeing each other. We were so happy until we weren’t. There was jealousy from both of us and there were arguments about things that were petty. We broke up several times, spent time apart and then came together to try again. As we got to know each other, our love grew stronger and we realized it was us against the world. We both failed each other numerous times in love and found ways to forgive. We married and had a child and struggled again as parents, having our disagreements and experiences but always finding common ground for our family. Family was always the focal point of our life together. No matter how we argued or disagreed or felt about one another, we now had a child and we both made sure she would always have us both no matter the cost. There were so many times we came together to apologize for our short comings and we would make up and all was right in the world. We knew each other so well; Alan was always aware of my moods and I his. Sometimes in the silence is when you can hear your partner the loudest. I can remember asking Alan if he could remember the first time he knew he loved me. He tells the story of my grey Volkswagen bug and an out of town trip we took together. It was a pleasant day so we had the top down. He remembers looking over at me driving with the sun hitting my face and me squinting my eyes to see. He said it was right there, in that moment, he knew he loved me. I can still hear him telling me that story like he was right here. I remember that moment too, and I remember his eyes looking at me. That was a perfect moment in our love story. Alan remains the only man to love me without judgement. He never found faults in me just perfect imperfections as he called it. I would push and push but Alan never gave up. In fact, he just loved me harder. Gosh, I have so many regrets of how I took our love for granted. I wish I had spent more time in his arms. I wish I had not spent time stressing about the things I could not change in our lives. I wish I convinced him to sleep in longer with me. Alan was so busy taking care of us and the house, he never rested. I wish I could have changed that for us. You see, there were so many times we both felt like we weren’t doing enough for each other or for our kids and we spent wasted time agonizing over that. Truth is, we did the best we could with the time and resources we had. I see now how precious time was with him and it hurts like hell to know time is something that you never get back. I can’t beat myself up and I try not to, but being real with myself, I think it will get better, the regret of it all. 3 years now and I still have so many damn regrets. I am glad we weren’t perfect. I am glad we had struggles. I am grateful for the tears and the laughter. It was all real to us. It made our love and our marriage real to our kids too. To show them that despite the arguments, the slammed doors and the occasional F bombs, love still remained. Let the world pass judgement on me and our marriage, it is a topic for the sheeple. The family and friends that are still around after these years know me and accepted my faults. I accepted Alan’s faults and appreciate his life I was blessed to be a part of. Even better, I have this little human that we made that shows me how his legacy lives on. She is so much Alan and a little bit me that gives me that everyday kick in the ass to get up and live. You see, if you believe that marriages are only what you see on social media with the smiles and the vacations don’t believe it. No great love was or will be perfect.