Today's the Day!!!

Today is the fourth anniversary of the day I married the man of my dreams.

It was a bright and beautiful day, full of joy and happiness.....along with a bit of nervousness, I suppose, for both of us. For Paulius, because it was his first marriage....for me because it wasn't.

When you get married for the first time you aren't quite sure of what to expect- altho all your married friends have probably told you LOADS and loads of stories, both "great love" and "horror" types. After a few months of married life you begin to form your OWN opinions about marriage.
Which is exactly what I did. I hadn't had the best of marriages......people tend to keep certain things under their hat, so to speak, before they marry someone.....and can get by with it because it's relatively easy to do when you aren't LIVING with them.
By the time my last marriage had deteriorated to the point of no return, I had sworn that if (and WHEN) I got out of it I would never-ever-EVER get married again. And I meant it with all my heart. I was sick to death of the men I married abusing (or ignoring) me and/or abusing my kids.
I swore I was going to work two jobs, move off to the mountains, have me a house built that was paid for as it was being built so no one could EVER make me move from it, and raise my kids on my own(I was homeschooling them) without any interference or highhandedness from any man.
And I sincerely meant it. They are MY kids and in the end- I felt I had the last and final word in anything that had to do with them. Period- End of discussion.
I meant to live the rest of my life with a great degree of happiness and serenity.
So, the company I worked for decided at that point to have the receptionist (my job) learn to work on a computer. Something I had never done........My sister had one and it seemed like a big scary thing that might be able to take over someones life.
But I had to learn it so I took the advice of the IT girl who came in to set my office up with the computer. She said the best way to learn was to go online, create a "hot-mail" account and then go in one of the chat rooms or such and find a "tutor". Some one willing to spend a bit of time helping me with learning what I would need to know.
That sounded easy enough so the first couple of days I set up an e-mail account.....yes it DID take me that long. I had never so much as turned a computer ON and after that there were lots of things to be considered, you know, when setting an e-mail account up. My biggest problem was trying to decide whether to have a Christmasy addie or a cute one, or a normal sounding one. Decisions, decisions.
At any rate, after I decided on THAT, I went on one of the sites and looked in the personals page for a "friend"/tutor.
And I read about 500 personals ads on there in the "friends" section. Paulius had been into photography at the time and had had a free night and had been messing about with his cam and had posted his photo with his friends ad. And no matter how many times I left it and read others- I kept returning to it. I almost didn't answer it because I thought to myself,"He's so damn gorgeous. He's always gonna be out with his mates and probably has a TON of Girlfriends as well to keep him occupied. He's not gonna have time to tutor me - especially with the 5 hour time difference!!!"
He lived in Britian.
But in the end I finally wrote him a quick e-mail explaining that I was new at the computer and needed a friend/tutor and I just really wanted a pen pal who was computer-smart and could help me with any problems I ran into while trying to figure it all out.
And to my surprise and delight- he wrote me back the next day!!!

And so our friendship began. And that's all it was in the beginning. We had a lot of fun with some of my problems on the computer....and when my computer went down I had a few hellacious phone bills from where I called him to figure out how to fix my computer. Lots of times it was something small- a couple of times it took a couple of days to work thru it.
We went on like that for two years. E-mails, phone calls, letters and cards bounced back and forth across the ocean like a tennis ball at a Wimbledon Championship Match.

But when I separated from my husband and filed for divorce, our(mine and Paulius') friendship/tutor relationship became more of a "friendship best-friend" relationship. That distance thing was certainly a damper on anything more.

I was beginning to really get to know him and he was always such a sweetheart. I began thinking that maybe someday, if I ever came across a guy like Paulius, I might consider letting myself fall in love again.
Then it dawned on me that I was already in love- with Paulius.

He completed university and came for a visit during his break after all the "exams" and his graduation ceremony. Even tho I was still working a full time job(now at the Police Department) for 6 weeks we spent our free time gadding about the country, seeing the sites and giving him a taste of what my life was like over here in America.
When it was time for him to fly back to England, I was heartbroken. It took everything I had in me to not run after him and beg him to stay. But we both managed it. I cried all the way home. Good thing Clay had rode down to the Atlanta Airport with us- he had to drive about half of the trip back before I could get hold of my emotions enough to take back over.

Anyway, Paul called me the day after Graduation and told me that he loved me before coming over- and being with me for that six weeks just proved to him that he couldn't imagine life without me being in it with him....and he proposed.
We figured it would take about 6 months before he was back and we could be married.........
That turned into 2 and a half YEARS before happening.
But happen it did, and he arrived back on April 4th, 2004.
It was a whirlwind of things set in motion for the wedding, and thanks to some wonderful wonderfully understanding vendors and friends and family we were married on May 15th, 2004.
My only regret is that Paulius' Parents weren't there for our wedding celebration.

It was the happiest day of my life to finally get to marry the man of my dreams.
Have my dreams of happiness and serenity finally come to fruition?

I would say....yes.
Sure, life could always be better(say, if we won that damn lottery everyone keeps talking about-but I have no proof of it's existence...yet.)but as normal, real life goes, yes. I have definitely found my Nirvana, my Valhalla, my Eden with my Paulius.

This is definitely what I was searching for............

Happy Anniversary , My Love.