Last week, Lauren put out a call for past Wedding Graduates to write Wedding Graduate Returns posts about what had happened since their wedding, and about how their wedding had played into their married life. Today we have the first of this (re-launched) series. You'll remember Helen & Lindi from their epic kissing in the rain wedding. Now they are here to talk about how the first year of marriage was hard, and what it's taught them about living their vows.
People talk about how the first year of marriage is the hardest... and I can only say, I hope so. After our spectacular wedding last year, we've had a bit of a tough go of it. Planning for the wedding was exciting and stressful and fun; the wedding itself was amazing. Our life since then has been amazing as well, but a lot of things have happened, and we've had to navigate through the rough patches together.
Right before our wedding, we had two massive, emotional, heartbreaking things happen with people we were close to. One was my bridesmaid who decided the week of our wedding that she couldn't be there for us because of newly found religious conviction. Another was when we found out that a person we both cared about was nothing like who we thought he was. We've repaired our relationship with the first person, thankfully, but likely never will with the second, although we've recovered from the aftershocks of both.
Then there was Everything That Happened With Our Families. Surprisingly, this was not the in-law drama that many couples struggle with surrounding their wedding, though we had some of that, too. No, more specifically, this was when a veritable herd of relatives had life emergencies and moved in with us for varying stints of time. Although we have two bedrooms, our apartment is rather small, so having other people live with us (usually as a surprise with less than 24 hours notice) was an added stress.
A week after our wedding, Lindi's 18-year-old half-sister, who we had never met, was kicked out of her house by her abusive stepfather. She needed help, and we helped her. She lived with us for about a month. A few months later, a cousin was having a hard time with her family, so she moved in with us for a few weeks while she sorted her life out. A relative was slated to go to rehab, but needed someone with her 24 hours a day until they had room for her, so she lived with us, too, and we took turns being with her while she went through the first stages of withdrawal. We had a massive flood in our city which left my little sister homeless for a month that stretched over finals week, so she moved in until her apartment was safe to live in again. We had a death in the family this summer, and six family members came to stay while we handled the funeral arrangements.
In the midst of all this, we navigated our first set of major holidays as a baby family, juggled school and work, built a photography business, wrote and defended our senior theses, graduated from college and undertook a job search in a very unfriendly job market in which we both have applied to dozens upon dozens of jobs and only one of us has been successful.
It's been a stressful year, and the way we act toward each other has reflected this. I'm ashamed to say that because we are supposed to be each other's biggest supporter, and sometimes we both suck at it. I tend to get irritable and snippy when I'm tired or sick, among other things. Lindi has a deep-seated fear of abandonment, among other things. It's been a long, long year full of big things going wrong in our world, one after another, and the number of arguments we've had shows it.
I do feel lucky that the things that we argue about tend to be small things blown out of proportion, and while that is really, really stupid, I am grateful that we tend to be in the same place on "the big stuff": how we deal with money, how we feel about family and future kidlets, what we want out of our life and so on. Those are, luckily, not what we usually fight about. No. You want to know the number one thing we fight about?
The dishes.
Continue reading Wedding Graduates Return: Helen & Lindi
