Ten Years in Pictures

I feel strange being sentimental about this day. In some ways, it's no longer our "anniversary," now that we're married and have to start counting the years all over again. And in some ways, it will always be our anniversary. Ten years ago today, I met Ben at a movie theater in a sketchy mall and spent the next three hours half-paying attention to an X-Men movie and desperately wishing he would hold my hand.

He didn't, but fortunately that wasn't a deal breaker. I was more comfortable around him than any other boy I had dated-but-not-dated (you know, the kind you went out with, but didn't really do anything with outside of school and a phone call here and there), and I was happy to preserve that close familiarity in the name of friendship than give it up for an awkwardness that would surely ruin whatever it was that this was turning into.

And I consider us so lucky that it did turn into something, and that we made the effort to keep that something going - because I can't imagine the past ten years without this amazingly funny, considerate, selfless person by my side. We always fight over who is the reacher and who is the settler, and I don't care what he says, I am most certainly the reacher. Because he is with out a doubt everything I admire in another human being and absolutely my best friend.