First Year Wedding Anniversary
After a year a marriage, some memories.
First off, everything is going better than I could have expected. I’ve heard that the first two years are the hardest on a marriage, and while Kelsy and I have had fights and arguments, there hasn’t been any time where I worried about our future together.
Kelsy and I had decided to not live together before getting married, so one of the last things we did before heading off to Indiana for the wedding was to drive around looking for our first apartment together. She had fond memories of living in North Hollywood on a particular street, we started our search there. As luck would have it, we drove by a cute little apartment building with a plywood “For Rent” sign. We called the number and the owner of the property directed us to one of the apartments, to talk to “Bunny”.
The building had not one, but two apartments available. After reminiscing about moving refrigerators up and down stairs, we settled on the ground floor one. Two bedrooms would give us some extra space to set up an office and also host the occasional out of town friend or family member. After some phone calls and signing a lease, we began merging our stuff together. We left an apartment full of boxes to go get married in Madison, IN.
After we returned to LA, there was a week before starting a new job together, so we had to unpack as much as we could. We did our best, but it took a few months before we had the place looking presentable. This was probably one of our greatest stresses. We didn’t really take a honeymoon, and had to deal with working right away. Every night we’d come home to an apartment that didn’t feel like it was either of ours. Then, if one of us tried to take ownership in an area, by rearranging or setting up a “system”, the other would feel threatened or left out of the loop. As the year has gone on though, we’ve both learned how to accept the other and to “pick our battles,” as Kelsy’s mom would say. Even though it still isn’t as clean and tidy as we’d like, our little apartment has matured with us this year and has truly become a place that we’ve built together.
