My Buddy and Me

This is a picture I took of fireworks from the 4th of July. Somebody had a pair of those trippy rainbow glasses, so I put them over the lens of my camera to get the colorful effect you see here.

I met my husband (who I call Buddy… funny thing is, he calls me Buddy too. It’s weird, I know) in high school. We met at the lunch table. I was in 9th grade and he was in 10th. He asked a friend of his to introduce me to him. I gave him my number and he called me for about a week, but never asked me out or anything. We sort of lost touch. He tells me to this day that I was snobby, but I remain steadfast that I was just shy. Because it’s the truth.

Fast forward 5 years later.

Buddy decided to come to school where I was going. A lot of my friends (who, incidentally, are all guys) had been friends with him for years. Although my friends at school were from my hometown, I didn’t really hang out with them until college. But we bonded rather quickly. I knew Buddy, but really didn’t talk to him much since our high school phone conversations (which consisted of me bitching about my little brother and him playing his guitar). But our little group formed, and we were all together, doing the silly immature things that we used to do.

The first time we actually ever hung out, he took my roommate and I to a Misfits show. He was a big fan, as was I, but I had never seen them. Of course I fell in love and thought they were awesome. My boyfriend at the time, who was a jealous, possessive, emotionally abusive asshole, was none too thrilled. But Buddy and I were just hanging out as friends, just as we had always done.

A year later my dickhead boyfriend moved to Florida the summer before my senior year. I was so happy to be rid of him. I was finally free to be myself, something I had lost for a long time. I spent the summer with my friends (who I was never allowed to see while dickhead was around), having a blast and remembering the little punk rock girl that I once was.

When school started back up, Buddy confessed that he was "attracted" to me. It was all very weird and confusing. I felt the same way. We "hooked up" (gotta love those college terms) after a night of drinking, and our friends were NOT happy. They didn’t want us to fuck up our group by getting involved in a relationship that might not work out. We didn’t care. We exiled ourselves for a while, went to the bars together, and got drunk a lot. It’s really funny that the beginning of our relationship involved a lot of alcohol.
At any rate, Buddy was getting out of a crappy relationship as well, so things were rocky at first. Having just found my freedom coming out of the crap that I did, I was kind of needy and had very little self-esteem. My goal had been to go back to school and party my ass off, something that I wasn’t allowed to do for two years. I didn’t plan on meeting my future husband. I wanted to be independent and free. That lasted about a month.
It took us a while to smooth things over and get our friends to accept us as a couple. There were only a select few of them who were very supportive of our relationship from the start. They thought we were perfect together. And we were. We still are.
We moved in together after I graduated, and things were great. Almost a year after this whole crazy thing started, we got engaged.

I decided to go back to school and of course, he supported it. He even moved back in with his parents for a year. Now that’s love. He moved out of his parent’s house when he was 18 and never considered going back. But he did for me.

We got married October 26 of 2002, so we are coming up on 2 years. I can’t say that marriage has been easy, but it’s just the regular life stuff that puts stress on our relationship. Number one being that I can’t find a job. But we don’t fight a lot, and when we do, it blows over quickly.

I can honestly say that Buddy is my best friend. I know it’s cheesy, but I don’t think anybody else would be able to put up with me. He challenges me. He makes me a stronger person. I wouldn’t want to be without him. I know that whole soul mate thing is cliché these days, but that’s what we are. The best part is, we have all the same friends, so there’s never any of that stupid jealous shit involved.

And that’s the story of my Buddy and me.