the thing is it's not like i set out to find my 9 year relationship.

i think that's what people forget. zach just hasn't allowed me to fall out of love with him. it makes him quite impressive. i'm not sure many guys have that kind of stamina.

i felt philosophical today and was talking to my new bestie, alix (shout out!) about (what do girls talk about?): relationships. when you fall in love at 19 and then cultivate that for 9 years, each day is a surprise. there was nothing about the first three even four years that said FOREVER to me. it was simple, i was in love with zach and each day i kept loving him. nine years later and it still, luckily, feels relatively simple. i love him. he makes each day a little special for me. it's rarely big gestures. zach's not a big gesture guy. it's him saying a sentence that i never expected to hear or doing some kind of crazy dance in the living room that makes me think that no one else in the world has ever done that dance. a lot of the time i take all of this 9 yearishness for granted. i think, "zach never does dishes, i bet there's a guy out there that does dishes." i bet i could find that too. if dishes were the most important thing in my life (or even in the top 20) i'd be miserable. but i'm not.

on valentines day in year two of our relationship part of my present was "monster mad libs." he got me mad libs. no reason. it's not like we had some sort of "mad lib" joke that made them significant, he just saw them and in a panic added them to his purchase. it was ridiculous and i thought, "any other guy would have more sense than to do this." turns out thats one of my fav. zach stories and maybe it took me too many years to realize this, but i fundamentally don't want "any other guy." i can't handle it. the idea of a remotely traditional guy grosses. me. out. i'm too sensitive to that feeling of, "oh. you're doing THAT thing. that thing that you probably saw on Dr. Phil or read in some magazine or heard from some friend or saw in some movie."

i've always felt different about everything as it relates to "love" and "romance." i just can't fit in to anything i feel like i'm "supposed" to fit into. i never thought about what would happen at my wedding, felt totally terrified of my first kiss, and didn't really even "date" before I met zach. i'm awkward. i'm too self-aware to let anybody do anything remotely traditional with me without acknowledging that it's typical and that i realize that it's typical out loud. so how does this work? the first week zach and i were dating i went to kiss him and after three seconds he pulled back and loudly said, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" and then laughed at how funny he was. and i thought it was hilarious too. and i still do.