Last year around our anniversary, Melody had just come out to me as transgender and I was awaiting my fairly definite diagnosis of MS. We took extended family photos on the eve of our anniversary, with our wedding photographer 🥹, immortalizing the wildest time in our years together thus far.
I remember telling Mel one morning in the shower, "I of course want us to support each other, but right now I think it makes sense if I worry about my body and you worry about your body, independently, instead." Oxygen-mask mentality, you know?
Today life feels a lil more relaxed, a lil less disruptive. We aren't 100% settled (who is?), but we aren't still wondering whether we must inevitably split over huge pieces of news that rock our worlds individually and collectively.
It's just one year later, and I can see some light at the end of this tunnel. A silhouetted image against that light reveals two scenes: one of me caring for Mel and Mel's body, and one of her caring for me and my body. The image is stunning and honest and true. It is the truth of where we must go.
As it turns out, we cannot just each worry about our own selves and bodies, not within the context of this marriage and this family. Our relationship was built on mutual respect and understanding, strengths that led us both to enjoy relatively early independence within our marriage. Now we understand our selves and our bodies mutually, acknowledging that interdependence is also strength (or STRANK!, as Brooks would say 😂). (Football is life, but football is also death.)
Ten years ago (!!) we bound these two bodies together by marriage. Then, we spent nine years trying to keep them distinct and discrete, coming together at times to connect and connect deeply, but only if we each stood to benefit individually. Oxygen-mask mentality.
In one year, we have married like complementary flavors placed in the fridge for a few hours to "marry." We have married like two pieces of rope, spliced and rejoined together seamlessly. Married! We have married each other in such a way that we are both changed, renewed, totaling more than the sum of our individual parts, a chemical reaction (as opposed to physical reaction, yes, seventh grade science) where something new is formed.
We still leave the door open for things between us to change if they must. We still choose each other explicitly and often, and I think we manage to keep appropriate boundaries of self. But this year I have been absolutely struck by the magnificence of caring for each other in such a way that I do NOT always know where Mel ends and where I begin. And we're just at the start!
Love generates through and between us both by virtue of deliberate and consensual joining, relaxing, marrying. This I could not have conceived of before last year. And I gotta say: it is one hell of a way to marry. 10/10, would recommend.
I love you, Melody Facer.
