Rick,
Sometimes when people ask me questions about myself or about my husband or about my marriage I launch into a big love story, a happy story where girl meets boy and finds that boy is amazingly nice. Where girl is nearly homeless and boy digs out a flashlight and shines a beam of hope into her entire dark world. Where the boy is so nice. And he’s the kind of nice that she thought died in the 2nd grade payground somehow. I always thought when I was in high school that the nice boy’s were so overrated. I thought I needed a bad boy and I got one for a time. I found out all about bad boy’s. They can really break a girl’s heart and tear apart all of her dreams and aspirations in the process. I learned the hard way, 12 years of the hard way.
During those 12 years I’m still not sure what exactly you were out there in the world doing but now that I’m here with you, I do know what the last 6 years have been all about. I really started my college journey back in January of 2003 shortly before I met you. I wrote a long list of things I wanted in my life, I recall they included
1.   Happiness
2.   Love
3.   Clean credit, savings, no financial stress
4.   A house, more specifically a “homeâ€
5.   A college degree
I spent a few years floundering about trying to heal everything that that bad boy broke. It took far longer than I imagined it ever would. BUT I would have never done it without you. In 2004 you and I hit some major snags in our relationship and I thought #2 on my list might completely fall apart. In Janurary of 2005 safely back in your arms I decided to go to college, from there I quickly enrolled in college. For four years people asked me if you were supportive, I mostly always thought you did something more amazing than being supportive…you simply stayed out of my way and allowed me to do whatever I wanted regarding school. But now….now that it’s June of 2009 and I look back on it…you are the nice boy. Nice boy’s are supportive, they are supportive without being overbearing, without taking credit for being supportive, without pointing it out every five minutes. The nice boy’s are so worth it.
There are a thousand emotions that fly through me when I consider where I am now and where I was then…then being 6 years ago. And if I could look up the then and the now in a dictionary your picture would be dispersed throughout every page from then to now. You’re patience, your hugs, your biscuits and gravy, your everything. You’re the reason I made it through. You’re the reason I stayed focused.
I have written so many papers there is no earthly way for me to configure it, except to say its been one paper per week for every course I took 40 classes and wrote 1 paper every week I was in class. That’s 200 papers. On average each paper was…1,500 words….Oh..never mind all of that. I just know that that entire journey was taken and I made it through because of you. I’m the smart one or so I always say…but you’re the one that know’s how to get me from Point A to Point B. A lot of patience, love and simply being nice to me, that and a lot of free GPS service on your part.
I love you and I’m having a hard time writing out with clarity what the past 6 years have meant to me in my life. They have been the best and yet I can’t fully put it into words. I just hope that you get it. You have changed my life…you are so to blame for all the good that it has become. And by good I mean amazingly good. Thanks for helping me check off all of the things on my goals list. I could not have done any of it without you. It is all “oursâ€. It is our house, our love, our life, our celebration on Saturday.Â
I’m so thrilled about how you really are excited and how much you want to watch me walk across the stage in cap and gown. You do realize even my own parents didn’t want to do that for me. I did not walk in my own highschool graduation because of my Mom. I almost forgot that….thanks for helping me forget so much of the sad past …thanks for giving me a bright future. Thanks for making the past not matter anymore. Thanks for supporting me along my life’s journey and my list of goals. Thanks for helping me reach them Rick. Thanks for being my oh so very nice boy.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Kristy
