Today I write about my other half. The term truly applies when it comes to me and V because we’re together 24/7 (never a night apart in nearly 7 years) and we split our life roles into ‘you handle this, I handle that.’ As such, together, we’re [quite nearly] a complete functioning adult.
Victor is a beyond fascinating person. You can read a little about his history in his bio. I’m kind of obsessed with him because I find interesting people exceptionally, well, interesting. I love layers, I love tapestries, I love experience — and V has all these things in spades. I also love how interested he is. He finds so many things captivating, and it’s rarely stuff anyone else notices or thinks about.
Now, I wrote the piece below (in italics, under a few photos) a few years ago, and I still get all mooney-eyed over it. I love reading it, and re-reading it, and re-falling in love with my husband regularly. That said, our marriage has definitely phased out the honeymoon unicorns and rainbows stage. It’s actually been a remarkably challenging few years for us, which unfortunately stands in contrast to our first 1-2 years of marriage. In the beginning with us, it was allllll holy shit I love you! let’s elope! yaaaaaaay we’re married! let’s be rootless cosmopolitans and live out of our car while we tour the country visiting friends and introducing them to one another! Live in the moment and revel in each other’s awesomeness!!! While this all sounds fabulous (and it was), massive things were being ignored, like student loan debt, clear career goals, where we’ll set up shop, or, really, anything that didn’t involve what we were going to do next week (or, more like, just tomorrow). It was both a lovely and super unsustainable time in our life, and how far I’ve come since then, I think about those days often.
We did eventually settle into Park City and start the business, and our life became solely about work. In addition to my student loan debt, I used credit cards to buy all the gear I needed to open my studio, so money was just not something we had to throw around. Plus, we needed basic stuff. An apartment. A car. Food. V worked days Mon-Fri at his copper crafting and then spent his evenings & weekends shooting with me; and I worked 16 hours a day 7 days I week to open and hustle my business in Park City (writing for magazines, client shoots, design projects, general networking opportunities, etc etc). Additionally, all of our time outside of work was spent with not one but two lawyers regarding, first, V’s residency status and, then, his citizen status. Multiple essential trips to the Russian embassy in San Francisco (the closest embassy to us) complicated an already lengthy and frustrating road to citizenship, and I remember sleeping in the car often throughout the ten times we crossed the Nevada desert to get all the documents he needed.
Other aspects of our life were even more important but just plain cost so much money. Expensive but crucial trips back to Victor’s small village in Europe reunited him with family members he hadn’t seen in 18 years. We also wanted to spend time with my family, each of whom live about as far apart from one another as possible (in the continental US, anyway — literally coast to coast). As we motored through these must-dos (work, debt, legalities, family) and lived paycheck to paycheck, any emphasis on ‘the future’ continued to stay on the backburner – we weren’t young or naive people, but we simply had too much going on in our present to even begin to figure out things like buying a house, retirement plans, or long term health care.
I know, I know. Everyone’s got their stories. It’s just that we certainly had our fair share throughout the first few years of our marriage. And I’m certain we must have looked like the most anti-social people in the world to the Park City community since we never went out and never did anything fun as we worked like dogs just to keep our head above water. And then… then… things started to come together. V became a citizen. I paid off a very serious student loan amount. V was able to leave his copper craftsman business to work with me full time. And bam! There was a bit of a honeymoon period where the years of crossing our t’s and dotting our i’s on every level paid off. I had spent years dreaming about getting to that point, fantasizing how it would feel to finally have some security. And although it was partly fun and definitely relieving, it was equally terrifying. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I believe it was around that time when I wrote the piece below.
Our woes these days are the ones that slapped us in the face when we barely expected it. Taxes. All kinds of scary insurances (life? disability?). Inability to afford a home in our home town. Inability to afford to have a child together. Long term care preparations. Some money in the bank, but aren’t we supposed to be investing and/or creating IRAs or something?! And with this type of crap hanging over our heads, and with time marching on for us both, we’re less celebrating our love these days and more worrying about how to face our future.
So what’s the cure to being scared that everyone else in their super nice homes and their super healthy 401Ks has made infinitely better life choices than you have? What’s the cure to wondering what’s next in life? Focusing on love.
Love love love.
In the words below, I love my man in the most meaningful way I can: by sharing my feelings about him. And reading and re-reading these words remind me that his partnership is ev.ery.thing to me.
I’d like to take a minute to share my love for this amazing man.
After two very long relationships in my 20s, I basically figured I didn’t want to get married. Or seek out marriage, I guess. I wasn’t resigned to being alone or anything that dramatic. I just weighed out the reality of dealing with someone else vs dealing only with myself, and I didn’t see how inviting anyone into my world was going to be an improvement on how I wanted to live.
So, for a sizable amount of time, I was a happily single person that spent most of her energy traveling, figuring out her career goals, and dealing with mistakes made in the past. I focussed solely on myself, which is something you’re unable to do when you’re a girlfriend, wife, or mother, and I was able to become the kind of person I’d wanted to be but struggled to find for a decade. In fact, I was proud of whom I’d become. I wasn’t rich, thin, beautiful, or successful — all those traditionally western ideals of perfection — but I was living *clean*. Like, my behavior & conscience was absolutely shiny and pure: I lived honestly and with good intentions, I walked my talk, and I followed my instincts in my choices. And that felt like a huge accomplishment.
One day, I started thinking that I might make a good partner to someone — that I’d reached a point where I thought I knew myself well enough to be able to give as much as I took, value someone’s heart as much as my own, and consider the world from a perspective other than my point of view. Every now and again, I’d write down what moved me about people I respected. Qualities that were important to me in general. And qualities that were essential to me, specifically. Not a list, like you see in the movies or on Oprah. Just… intentions, maybe.
And then I met V, and I was a m a z e d. Truly, utterly, wholly amazed by this human being. He was a manifestation of — honest-to-god — every.single.thing I’d written down about my needs. Someone passionate but realistic. An insatiable, childlike curiosity. Respectful but challenging. Gives-you-the-shirt-off-his-back type of generosity; makes-me-a-better-person level of integrity. Mature, with hard, horrible life experiences under his belt. Happy, in his heart & in a way that emanates warmth & security. Shares my sense of humor, although sometimes I’m not sure if he’s laughing because something is funny, or because I’m laughing and he wants to share my joy — either way, I adore him for it. And, most of all, kindness. The type of compassionate, genuine kindness that can make you cry.
Oh, sure, he does stuff that drives me bananas. He can NEVER, ever figure out where to park in a parking lot, so we end up driving around forever as he weighs his options. He loves, LOVES onions but they make him smell dreadfully. He devours food insanely fast so we can’t ‘share’ anything fairly (I end up with 1/4 of it unless I want to feel like I’m a competitive eater). He can’t multitask, so if we’re on the highway together and he starts talking to me, the speedometer needle starts going down and inevitably people start honking. But these things are ridiculously minuscule and even as I write them out now, I’m smiling. The thing is: V is more than my husband, the person I married. He is my partner, in every sense of the word. In life & business. At home & on the road. In decisions & goal-setting. In love & friendship. And it’s everything I’ve ever wanted.