Taken from a post I wrote a couple years back (slightly tweaked of course):
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The leaves begin to change, pumpkins adorn porches, the local park advertises their haunted ghost tour...it's Fall and I can't help but be whisked back 15 years when it all began. Little did we know back then, as young infatuated teenagers, what life had in store for us.
Although we had gone to middle school together and knew of each other, Matt and I never hung around with the same group of people so we were virtually strangers to each other. Junior year of high school rolled around and while I was out with a mutual friend, Matt and I ran into each other at a local diner. He came over to talk to our friend who, shortly after we arrived, had to go make a quick phonecall. Matt smiled and slipped into the now empty booth across from me and started talking. I can't tell you what he wore (although I am guessing it was a sleeveless t shirt and that damn denim jacket he practically lived in) or what exactly was said since all words jumbled together in my mind as I became lost in his long silkened Pantene hair and chiseled jawline, but I remember distinctly being quite taken by his charm especially when I foolishly spilled an open creamer I was playing with on the table. Of course I felt clumsy and embarrassed but, without missing a beat, he simply wiped it up without even acknowledging the incident and kept on with the conversation. It was such a simple act but one that has stuck with me for fifteen years.
The following week was one of innocently flirting in the halls or during lunch in the cafeteria. He would come kneel by our lunch table to talk to some mutual friends and I could feel my heart flutter each time he was anywhere near me. I would pretend to be unusually interested in my brown bagged peanut butter and jelly sandwich but I actually was holding my breath hoping he would talk to me..or even smile at me...or hell, just look at me. The real turning point for us came when the local YMCA camp held their annual haunted hayride. We were both set to volunteer that year and although I was scheduled to be the dead bride riding a horse around the field and he was a tourguide in black cloak attire, a few days into the event, we found ourselves asking for reassignment--Freddy Krueger and his victim it was. Matt got to chase me from a cabin into the path of the wagon and kill me--repeatedly. I know, the romance is just heart warming isn't it?
The details and events of the next couple of years are ones I will spare you during this particular entry but I will say some were incredibly endearing--a chapter straight from a romance novel--while others were unspeakably difficult--an after school special gone terribly wrong. There is no denying our lives did not follow the traditional path nor did we do things in the expected order, but, nonetheless, here we are, 15 years, 3 beautiful daughters, an obnoxiously huge mortgage and cheerio laden mini van later--just as in love and infatuated as ever. I can not even remember myself without him. It should, perhaps, frighten me a little to realize I wouldn't truly know myself without him at this point, but it doesn't. How can such a thing frighten me after we have practically grown up together and shared so much? He is the love of my life, my best friend, my charming Freddy Krueger--my everything.
Here's to 15 years of falling in love, driving each other nuts, building a family, planning for old age and becoming convinced that no one else in this world could ever love us (or deal with us) so thank goodness we have each other. XOXO
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