True Love

Well, it's Valentines Day and while I'm not a huge fan of the obligation to waste money on cards and flowers it doesn't mean that I don't have someone to show my love for. Since my wife and I have long had a tradition of not purchasing gifts for each other I will not be spending large amounts of money on marginally useful gifts for my wife.I don't think that love should be expressed by a corporation trying to tell us what love is. I'm going to skip temporary and commercial clichés and put pen to paper, or pixel to screen if we are being honest, and express my love for my wife publicly and fully.

For those of you who don't know, my wife and I where high school sweethearts. My wife was pregnant with our first child at the age of 17 and I dropped out of hight school to support my family. It's impossible to impress on someone who hasn't gone through a teen pregnancy how much is stacked against you. In many ways my wife would have been better off, in terms of assistance programs, if I had just ran away. We fought the odds and each other those first few years and many time it was a make or break situation. We've lived on almost nothing and made the best of it. Above all we've laughed as much as we've cried and loved exponentially more than we've fought.

What we've created is our own world together where we are honest, even to a fault, and not have it leveraged against us. We can laugh, even at each other's expense, and cry together, even if we don't fully understand the reasons. I'm pushed every day to be a better person than I ever though possible. We are fast approaching having spent more of our lives together than apart and I wouldn't change that for anything. It is one thing to say that you wake up every day feeling more in love with your partner and another to experience it year after year. I may have been young when I married my wife but I found the best one out there and there is no way in hell I'm letting go.

I'm not a talented writer, I'm not a poet, I'm not hopelessly romantic. I'm just a grateful husband who has loved his wife more than anyone can fathom.

Kacie, I love you.