Letting Go of the Fairytale: Life, Love, and Anxiety

I always had these pictures in my head of what true love looked like. It was almost always grandiose, extravagant, and hopelessly romantic.

I’ve been married for almost three months now, and it’s been anything but that.

My wedding was a fairytale. Down to every detail, it was the best day of my life and the beginning of my own great love.

The day-to-day details aren’t like a movie, though. True love is real love put into practice every day. It is hard work, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever experienced. Not every day has been easy, but there hasn’t been a day where I would have traded my marriage for anything.

I live with anxiety (and occasionally, depression). Adding this element to a marriage makes things even more interesting and challenging. My husband and I are constantly dealing with the symptoms of my anxiety, and we’re both learning how to best remedy the dark days.

Not every day is a dark day; some days are ordinary and some days are extraordinary. That’s life, though. Through it all, I’ve found someone who makes all of those days better and who will kiss me in the middle of a gas station when the moment seems right. It’s then and there — standing in the middle of the cat food and the pork rinds — that I realize this love is unlike any grandiose, extravagant picture I painted in my head. It’s better than that. It’s real. It’s genuine. It makes me want to fight to be the best version of myself.

Everyone deserves a gas-station-makeout kind of love. You deserve a person who will make even the most menial of tasks seem fun. You deserve a person who loves you in such a way that you feel free to be your true and genuine self, flaws and all.