Anniversary Date

So we had big plans to celebrate our anniversary on Saturday evening.  We're planners, you know, so we'd talked about this well in advance.  I got all dolled up in a little black dress, David gave me a sweet card, and we headed downtown to have wine and cheese and a delicious dinner at one of our favorite restaurants.  It's exactly the kind of place you would imagine going on an anniversary date--low lights, intimate table settings, delicious food.  David had downloaded our current favorite song, so he was setting the mood by singing a little Blake Shelton as we drove downtown (so cute): 

You'll be my Louisiana, I'll be your Mississippi, 
You'll be my little Loretta, I'll be your Conway Twitty...

Everything was perfect.  I was in a cute dress, I had a cute date, we were going out to my choice of restaurants, I was going to order my favorite wine.  We got about halfway there and David said to me, "You okay?"

And I burst into tears.

I wasn't hungry.  I didn't want to go out.  I just couldn't bring myself to be in the mood to celebrate anything.  Even being married to this sexy guy:

Love the hat.

So I cried, and apologized for crying, and cried some more, and David tried to figure out what might possibly make me happy.

I try hard not to dwell too much on what might have been, what was supposed to be, what I imagined our summer would be like.  But I just couldn't get past the idea that this should have been a big date night--we should have gotten a babysitter and made plans to stay out late and then spent the evening talking about our adorable baby.  Instead, it was like any other evening the two of us decide to go out instead of stay in.  I thought this would be the happiest time of my life and instead this is the saddest, most difficult time I've ever experienced.  We have everything we ever wanted... except Eliza.

Finally, we decided to forget about our original plans.  We didn't go downtown at all, and ended up in the Central West End.  We sat outside at a casual little Mexican restaurant.  Somehow chips and salsa and sangria was something I could enjoy sharing with David without feeling like we were faking it.  Originally, I think I was trying too hard to hold on to an idea of what our anniversary should be, when what I really wanted was actually something different, less traditional, easier.

It's not too hard to make the leap from that experience Saturday night to the rest of my life.  There is happiness here, in the middle of this murky sadness.  It's just hard to recognize sometimes because it doesn't look the way I thought it would.  And I was so in love with that idea of what my life would be like, that it's hard to accept I'll never have things just the way I thought they'd be. 

I'm trying to let go of the perfect vision I had, and hold on to the happiness that is still here.

I can rage and cry about the unfairness of it all--and some days, I still really need to do that.  But I can also find unexpected moments of happiness--like finding myself overdressed, eating chips and salsa on a crowded outdoor patio, sipping sangria and enjoying the breeze.

It wasn't the anniversary date we had envisioned, but it was nice in its own way. 

I hope that in a few more years we'll be able to look back and say the same thing about our life together.