30 Days: Day 19- How I Met My Husband

I've mentioned before, numerous times, what a hot mess I was for approximately the first 20 years of my life. Here, you will see that full force, as I am going to relive meeting my now husband.

I was in the process of moving out of an apartment I had shared with a boyfriend for less than a year. I had been mostly faithful to him, never physically involving myself with anyone else, but certainly in some inappropriate relationships with boys amongst the interwebs/telephone. I mean, I HOPE they were boys. I had conversed at length with one boy in particular, who peeked my interest and who happened to live only a few hours south of me in Pensacola FL. I don't know how I had the time or money to do it, but I decided to take a trip down to meet him with a girlfriend and her guy friend, who I just knew as "that dude you're friends with".

Meeting people from online in real life, 5 plus driving hours away from home, where there is no true escape from said individual, went pretty much exactly as you may expect. Bad. Bad bad bad. The guy was really awkward in real life (go figure right), and expected way more from me than I was even on the cusp of willing to give. I don't remember much, other than constantly trying to avoid him touching me in any way. We were all staying at a hotel and I definitely made him go home come night night time.

So our last night there, this guy who I was visiting (whose name completely escapes me) says his friend is having a party at some hotel. We agree to go. I feel certain it must have been pretty lame, because I found myself standing outside the room smoking. It was here, in the dirty breezeway of some skeezy hotel in Pensacola FL, that my life would be forever changed.

As I stood smoking, looking cooler than ever I am sure, up walks this boy. He is wearing Dickie shorts, a plaid pearl-snap shirt, low top Chucks and a white bandana peeking out from underneath his side cocked black, flat brim baseball cap. He has a silver necklace whose pendant is the Cadillac emblem, and tattoos on his arms and legs. In his hand he holds an unnecessarily large Taco Bell cup. I would later find out that in the cup, was 80% Southern Comfort and 20% Dr. Pepper. I think it was not his first drink of the night.

So here in front of me stands this young, adorable, blue eyed punk-hop drunk boy. And he talks. And he talks and talks and talks. Turns out he had been ejected from the party he was attending for not being a Marine. He spent most of his words defending the coolness of the Navy, how (even though he had barely made it out of boot camp at this point), he spends all his time defending the country and should therefor be respected by, well, everyone. His duty never ends, he never clocks out, he is 24/7 on call for the sake of America. ('MURICA!) It's good America didn't need his service on this particular night, as I am certain he would have been of little use.

I'm not sure how we went from that to talking about anything else, but there was a moment in which he was showing me his tattoos and at the time most of them were Cadillac related. Everyone knows the Caddy is the staple car of all gangsters, particularly those residing in the dirty south, (two words I just so happened to have tattooed on my wrists). At the time, I was much more gangster than now, so the boy with the Cadillac tattoos, talking to me about the dirty south and looking like the lost member of Blink 182 was down right DREAMY.

From that conversation we ran off, down some other breezeway in order for me to escape the creeper online guy, and sat on a bench talking about what I am sure had no value at all because he was wasted and I was just gonna agree with anything he said because he was cute. Then he took me to the parking lot to show me his Cadillac. I don't actually like this particular make of car. I mean, yes, Cadillac's are important in the reppin of the dirty dirty, but the truth was they mostly just reminded me of someones Grandma. His was no different. It was huge and burnt orange and, no thanks.

And then we kissed. It was in a stairwell and it was terrible. Not any sort of first kiss from the movies, or that you dream of, or covet the memory of for years to come. It was aggressive and sloppy. So I gave him my number and he and his giant cup of liquor DROVE OFF back to BASE and to his barracks. I can't be sure, but I feel like while he was drunk driving back to government property he may have called me. Making sure the number worked.

I went home and talked to him constantly through out the week. He didn't remember what I looked like or much of anything from that night, but my shining personality was enough to keep him interested until the next weekend when he came to visit. He brought 2 friends, in case I was ugly and he needed an excuse to bail. Obviously, I was absolutely DARLING and such a total catch that he decided to stay. We spent the weekend at the Days Inn with his shipmates and 2 of my friends. I probably got pregnant sometime in that 48 hours. I was real classy.

Before he headed out he wrote something nice, and I am sure terribly romantic for me on one of the empty OE bottles from the weekend. How lucky was I?

The rest is history. We made the baby and got hitched. Then lived through absolute hell on earth for awhile. Split up. Got back together. Therapy. Made another baby. Had some awesome years. Lived through more hell. Therapy. Bought a house. Bout to move to our 3rd duty station in 11 years. Wash, rinse repeat. Life is good. Even when it's bad, it's good. Because Jesus and because work.