Today is the anniversary of the first time my wife told me that she loved me.  It was 1997, and we had known each other for almost three years.

We met in March of 1994.  She was working in a seedy bar, and I, who had recently turned 21, was looking for a seedy bar in which to hang out.  The one where she worked happened to be one where my friends had managed to get in without being carded just a few days before, so that was my bar of choice. 

On a day when I went by alone I saw her.  I would like to say that it was love at first sight, but it wasn't.  It was most certainly lust, though.  Her hair was long, all the way down to her behind, and it was a very bright shade of blonde.  Her skin was pale white, made paler by the crappy lighting of the bar.  The hair and skin combined with her bright red lipstick (uncharacteristic of her I found out later) to make her look like a short, small-breasted version of Christina Applegate.  After a pass through the establishement she stopped near my table and looked at me for a moment.  I was tall (almost an inch taller than I am now), of average build, with dark hair and incredibly necessary glasses.  She had some time to socialize, so she walked up to me and asked, "You're not some sort of weirdo, are you?"

I managed to avoid staring at her legs, insanely long for someone so short, and answered her question with a question, "By what standards?"

"Titty bar standards."

"Titty bar standards?  No, not by titty bar standards."

So she sat down out of the blue and started talking to me.  I was astonished.  This sort of thing did not happen to me.  People don't just decide they're going to talk to me.  I give off some sort of vibe that makes most people stay away.

We talked for a few hours, occasionally interrupted by her having to go do her job.  Aside from being smoking hot, which isn't really that unusual, she also turned out to be quite funny, smart and interesting.  Unfortunately, she was also involved.  She was living with her long term boyfriend, and not looking for anyone new.  She just felt like talking to someone to pass the time, and something about me made me a likely candidate.  I wasn't in love with her yet, but a few hours conversation had changed things from lust to infatuation.  She was perfect in every way that I could think of.

Circumstances at work the next day led to me getting off work early and having the next few days free.  I stopped at my best friend's house to clean up and change clothes, and told him he was driving me to a bar.  He was the only friend I had who was older than me, so I didn't worry about him getting carded.  He wanted to know what the big deal was.  I told him I met a girl the night before, and she was too perfect.  Because I had self loathing even then, my self-destructive tendencies considered her unavailability to be just one more proof of perfection.  I wanted him to see her, to prove to me that she really existed, and wasn't just a hallucination cooked up by my inherent lonliness.  He agreed.  She wasn't there.

It turned out that she had one night off a week (and three jobs!), and we had chosen that single night to go back.  I got drunk out of my mind, partially convinced of my own insanity.  A few nights later, though, and I went back to the bar and saw her again.  To my surprise, she remembered me, and seemed glad to see me.  I spent the next several months hanging out at the bar, spending as much time talking to her as I could.  I fell in love with her very, very quickly.

A few months after I met her, she broke up with her boyfriend.  They had a lease together, so they stayed roommates, but they were no longer a couple.  I did not ask her out.

She asked for my phone number and I happily gave it to her.  I did not ask her out.

We started talking on the telephone for hours at a time.  I also wrote her occasional letters.  She seemed to enjoy both.  I still did not ask her out.

She stopped a phone conversation to tell me that it was okay for me to call her, she didn't have to be the one initiating communication.  I politely pointed out that, although it was on my caller ID, she had never actually given me her number.  She formally gave me her phone number and let me know it was okay to call her.  I still did not ask her out.  She seemed to like me, but what if I was wrong?

She briefly dated a guy who also worked at the bar.  Very briefly.  She broke up with him because he lied to her about cheating on her.  Not that he cheated and lied about it, he hadn't cheated, but lied and said he did.  He was trying to see if she liked him enough to get jealous.  Instead, she dumped him for his dishonesty.  I still did not ask  her out.

On the phone one evening, nine months after we met, and after hundreds of hours of conversations, she forced me to ask her out on a date.  Well, sort of forced me.  When I get nervous I develop a stammer.  The more nervous I am, the more pronounced I get.  It is one of the reasons my speach slows down when I get upset.  On the one hand I don't want to say something I'll regret; on the other hand, I don't want to trip over my own words.  I tried to ask her out, but the words were jamming up in my mouth.  Being a very smart woman, she finally stopped me, "Are you trying to ask me out on a date?"

I eventually managed an affirmative of some sort.  She asked, "Why has it taken so long?"

After some more stammering I got out that I was terrified that she would say, "No."  It is my experience that all the hours of great times and conversation mean absolutely nothing.  Even after nine months I was afraid she would let me know that she "thinks of me like a brother."

"Well, I would be happy to say 'yes' to a date with you.  You just have to actually ask me out.  Otherwise, it isn't going to happen."

Even with that reasurrance, it took some effort to get the question out of my mouth.

So in the fall of 1994, and very briefly into 1995, we dated.  Eventually, she broke it off with me.  She said something to the effect that it was obvious that I was much more into the relationship than she was, and it wasn't fair to me.  But she still wanted to be friends.  I told her that I understood.  Then I did the unexpected and unthinkable.  I stayed friends with her.

When she and her new roommate (and her new roommate's boyfriend) moved, I helped.  I continued to spend time with her, barely seeing her less than I had before.  I no longer got to touch her (we hadn't really gone any farther than kissing), but we still had occasional lunches together, we still saw movies.  I even took her to see a Tom Petty concert.  The only thing we never really did was hang out at her apartment.  Not long after the concert I had a very bad day and wanted to talk to her.  I couldn't find her.  She wasn't at either of her jobs, and she wasn't answering her phone.  I started to get really worried, but I eventually found her, and she was fine.  In fact, she had just gotten married, to her roommate's boyfriend.

I hadn't even known she was seeing anyone.  I had thought we were friends.  I was devastated.  Even now, almost fifteen years later, it brings tears to my eyes.  I asked her why she didn't let me know.  She said it seemed like it would hurt me.  I asked if our friendship meant so little that I didn't even warrant a wedding invitation.  She asked, "Would you have gone?"

"No, but I would have sent a present."

She hugged me and apologized for the secrecy.  We agreed to remain friends.  I made an attempt to get to know him, since he was my friend's husband.  He turned out to be an annoying waste of flesh.  I had briefly met him when he was dating her roommate, and hated him then.  The fact that he was now married to the woman of my dreams did not lessen my opinion of him.  To this day I despise him.

Anyway, a few months passed, and I figured out that she was pregnant before she did.  She was surprised.  She had thought she couldn't get pregnant.  I had wondered how my life could get any worse once she got married, and decided that the only other things were pregnancy and moving away.  Of course, she moved away to California before the end of the year.  That was 1995.  Until 2009, it was the worst year of my life.

We stayed friends.  We stayed in touch.  We continued telephone conversations and letters back and forth.  After the baby was born in 1996, I used some vacation to go to California and visit.  I also found someone who really seemed to like me, but I was only aware of that in retrospect.  By the end of 1996, hubby had given up on trying to break in to showbiz, and they moved back to Oklahoma.  She and the baby came back right around Thanksgiving, and hubby followed about two weeks later.  Their marriage was in trouble.  I took the opportunity to tell her that I was in love with her, that I was still in love with her, but that I wanted her to do whatever made her happy.  She told me that she had broken things off with me because some part of her did not feel like she deserved happiness, and that same part got her involved with him because she knew (on some level) that it was doomed.

She told him between Christmas and New Year's that she wanted a divorce.  He formally moved out by January 9th, and within a week we were a couple.  I began raising her daughter as if she were my own.  I had been telling her that I loved her on an amost daily basis since admitting my feelings to her.  She said it back to me on January 20, 1997.  1997 was the greatest year of my life. 

We moved in together in 1998.  We got married in 2000.  There was a very bad spontaneous miscarriage in 2000, and I almost lost her.  It was terrifying.  Around our daughter's fifth birthday we decided to not have any more kids.  The age difference would be too great.  Almost immediately she became pregnant with our son, born one day short of 9 months after big sis's birthday.  With the pain of the miscarriage still there, we decided that he would be our last one, even if she didn't carry to term.  I got a vasectomy, because it was the easiest option.

I almost lost her again a few years later.  An exam for a persistant cough managed to turn up a tumor growing on the inside of her rib cage.  There was some major surgery, and a couple of weeks in the hospital.  She always seems self-conscious of her (rather large) scar, running around her shoulderblade from the top to her side.  I always thought it was beautiful, because it saved her life.  The tumor was benign, but its direction and aggressiveness of growth meant that, had we not found it, she probably would have been dead in less than a year.

I thought things were going well.  In our time together we had only one big argument, and that was more of me standing there and taking it, because I freely admitted that I was in the wrong.  I had gotten and used a credit card without telling her, then I lied about it.  She told me how strongly she felt about trust, and let me know that the only reason we weren't getting a divorce was that our son was too young to understand what was happening.  I agreed to never do it again.

There's much more to the story.  I will complete it later.  Right now I have to get ready for my daughter's arrival home.