I met Tim at a crossroads in my life. I was not intending to meet anyone, I did not want to meet anyone. I was ready to explore the world independently and without anyone by my side. I needed, wanted to get to know myself. Following one of these adventures of my independent life, I just happened to get stuck in Seattle on a trip back from Alaska. I did everything I could to get back to Phoenix that night but as luck (or fate) would have it, Seattle was in the midst of a huge windstorm. No amount of money or begging would have gotten me back to Phoenix that night. No one was leaving Seattle. I barely made it in (to say it was shaky would be an understatement)...
I get to my hotel in Seattle (Seattle! Ugh! I never wanted to go to Seattle! I just want to go home!...Those were the thoughts going through my head) and all of the power was out. They had to manually check me in, which, by the way, takes forever. What did anyone ever do without technology? 20 minutes in and I start to feel funny. Next thing I know, I think I am awakening from sleeping in my bed and I'm all warm and cozy but wait... my bed feels like freaking concrete and that's not a blanket, that's my coat. And who are all these people looking at me? Why are they all touching me?
I passed the hell out. And the only way I could describe how I felt like at that point: absolute shit. I have never passed out like that before in my life, or again for that matter. The paramedics there were trying to convince me to go to the hospital due to that fact and to the fact that my blood pressure/heart rate were all over the board. Not to mention how crappy I felt... I remember trying to resist going to the hospital and saying, "it's going to cost a million dollars" and then I hear, "No, probably three million." I laugh and look over my left shoulder and there is Tim, kneeling down beside me and he says, "Hi, I'm Tim, I'll be your EMT tonight."
All time stopped. Tim and I have talked at great lengths about what that moment meant to each of us. I think that for both of us we just knew that somehow our lives were changing. We weren't sure exactly how or what exactly that meant but it was a moment so powerful, so intense that we knew our lives would never be the same.
Tim took me to the hospital that night. Subsequently I did have strep throat... which is really weird because it didn't even hurt! But that would explain the passing out. I flew back to Phoenix at 5am the next day... I stayed in the hospital until about 2am and then just went straight to the airport. I have never felt both so physically horrible and but so emotionally overjoyed (for what, I wasn't sure) at the same time.
Tim called a day later. I thought that Washington paramedics were just nice and he was just checking up. Except we had the conversation that to this day has still not ended. Two weeks later I flew BACK to Seattle. I surprised my friends, hell, I surprised myself. But I followed my heart and that is all I could hope for anyone. The following 6 months were filled with as many visits as we could fit in. I couldn't really talk about it at the time because my life, on the surface, was a little bit in disarray. I wasn't really sure where I was headed and I didn't want to hurt anyone unnecessarily. In May of 2007 I moved to the city I never even considered visiting, to be with the paramedic that I fell in love with, who I never expected to meet.
Life has a funny thing of doing that... when you least expect it, everything becomes clear and you just KNOW. The road might not always be easy but when it is traveled with that companion who completes you, in a way that makes you wonder how you never realized fully what you were missing, it becomes more clear, more straight, more easy to travel along.
As I once read, "The tragedies in my own life have been of a personal and largely self-created nature." For me, it took a long, long time to mend myself, my life, my soul, and everyone around me-if I was ever even capable of that. I tried anyway. In some respects, I don't know that I am entirely there yet or if I ever will be. There are people who will probably always question me, my intent, my reasonings for doing certain things. There are wounds that may never heal. There will always be a a place that hurts in my heart, unlike any pain I have ever felt, for the journey that I have been on, for the people I did not intentionally mean to hurt along the way, for the people that I did love- just not in a way that these people truly deserved to be loved. I will forever hurt for not realizing that sooner, for taking these people on the ride with me, for knowing how amazing these people were, but not understanding myself better. I still get crippled by pain when I look back sometimes. It will always hurt, it is as simple as that. I do not have any regrets, however. I may wish that in some cases I handled myself differently but overall, there are no regrets. I did the most loving thing I could by realizing that something was missing. I did the most loving thing I could by breaking free. I did the most loving thing I could by not being afraid, by not wanting the comfortable life, by knowing that I was just following my heart. I will never fault myself for that, as much as I have been faulted for it through the past few years.
As soon as I met Tim, it all made sense to me. All of the decisions that I had made up to that point, that got me to that point, that I had even doubted myself, all became clear. What I knew without hesitation before was validated just that much more because I found what everyone is looking for. When I met Tim, I found happiness. I found home. I found love in a way that I have never been able to see or feel love before in my life. I felt the rays of happiness and hope for the first time in a long time-possibly in a way that I have never been open to before. And as someone once said "..and when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness you must grab onto the ankles of it and not let go until it grabs you face-first out of the dirt and realize that you deserve it. This is not selfishness but obligation." It has taken me a long time to realize that I can and will and do deserve to have happiness, especially after traveling such a tough road full of potholes, obstacles and people telling me up and down, right and left that I am making a huge mistake, I am going the wrong way. I have found that happiness and love are real feelings and it actually doesn't take work or any sort of viable effort to feel them if it is real and true. It fills you up, fulfills you, makes you experience emotions that you never thought existed. Although I had a good life before, I have never known these things to be like this. And this, this invaluable thing, is what I found in Tim. Of course, there are so, so many other qualities with him and I that just click, that just work. But this is the main, everlasting quality that will never change like values, hobbies, likes/dislikes sometimes do. And that, to me is enough.
In was never a question of whether or not we would be together. We booked our trip to Hawaii late last spring and then a couple months later decided, why not just get married? It is just how it has always worked with us... from the beginning of us, to me moving to Seattle- it just made sense. We decided that we did not want anyone at our wedding, maybe just a reception after we returned but really, even that was not a big deal. We felt, still feel, that moment of a wedding is so intimate and personal. I am not sure what the point is in having 50 or more people watch as you walk hand in hand into a lifetime of marriage, in which you only have each other. I did not want a big wedding, I did not want the meaning lost. I learned my lessons in this the hard way. To us marriage is a daily commitment to your partner and to enter into that relationship of marriage, to make sure that we looked at each other in that moment and knew just how committed to this thing that we both are, we just needed the two of us. It was the best thing we ever could have done. I will never regret our decision on this in my life. I have never been happier than I was on that day and if anyone would have been there, it would have taken away from the intimacy of the moment. It was a moment not unlike the moment that we met... powerful, intense, real, full of love, and enough to sustain each of us in this walk together.
On the day of our actual wedding, we got up rather leisurely, ate breakfast, went and got my dress at the bridal shop in town that it was shipped to, got a couples lava rock massage, went and ate lunch (turkey wrap for me, spicy fish wrap for Tim). Then Tim got dressed, he ran out and waited while I had a couple hours of hair and makeup, then we met, took a limo to the beach and commenced with the whole afternoon and evening. That night we had a private dinner for two on the beach... it was about 4 or so courses and we had our own personal chef who made each course, served us, and in between let us kiss under the tiki torches, talk about our beautiful day, listen to the ocean, and sip wine. It seriously couldn't have been a more perfect day.
And pictures.. They are, for the most part, in chronological order from the ceremony to sunset pictures. They really need no explanation.
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