My Valentine’s Day

The first time I got married, we got engaged in late 2008 and had planned on getting married in June of 2009. However, my soon to be husband got orders in January to deploy in march. He was going to be gone for at least 7 months. He decided he wanted to get married now and postpone the wedding for later. I really wanted to do it in the summer, so we postponed it to the year after, in 2010. 

We were already getting into February when we finally looked at our calendars to figure out the best day to get married. I had a job where I was away from home 4 days or more at a time. Kind of like a mini deployment. So I looked at the weekends I would be home, so it didn’t bother his workdays. I picked a weekend and brought it up to him and he said, “That’s Valentine’s Day.” 

I didn’t even put that together. I refused to have my anniversary on such a day when every f***ing couple were going to be out and about and it being hard to find a place to go to, without having to wait for hours. I was like NOPE! However, I could not for the life of me find another day to do this… I was almost devastated when I finally saw President’s Day. We were just going to do the Justice of the Peace marriage, so I called the city hall and asked if there was a judge that would not mind doing this on a holiday. Thank god I found one!

So that was what we did! Got married that day instead of Valentine’s Day. It took a lot of planning, but I did it! What a relief! However, I realized very quickly that I was not happy with being married and so it only lasted 2 years and 9 months. 

It was only one month after I signed the divorce papers, when I met my current husband. I knew that what I had with my ex-husband was all there was to a marriage, I didn’t want it.

So I told him if a relationship was what he wanted, there was the door. Little did I know, he went through a very bad marriage that lasted 4 years and a half, which ended a little over a year before. His ex-wife was extremely manipulative so, in response, told me if I liked playing mind games there was the door. “I don’t even want a relationship with you… Why would I play mind games?” And that was how our “relationship started”.

He swears I moved into his house that evening. I disagree. We all have our perspectives LOL. Eventually, we found ourselves in an actual relationship and got engaged in August of 2012. We also wanted to have an anniversary in the summer, so we picked a date in the month of July of 2013.

Several months after we picked the date, so many things happened in the military. All the things that pissed me off all started from the time my first marriage was falling apart. Things that pissed me off continued to happen and I finally got to a point where I was just done. So I told Josh, before that year ended, it was just around the holidays, that I wanted to leave the military. I will still follow him in marriage, but I am done with being enlisted. 

The end of my enlistment was in October so I still had a while, but luckily there was something called a rollover that started in January. The government will decide they have too many troops and start something called a rollover. Which is the only time members can be either put into the rollover, in a sense “fired”,  or members can volunteer for a rollover, in a sense “quit”. I volunteered for it right away. While we were waiting for my paperwork to go through, Josh decided he was going to volunteer for the rollover as well. He said, let’s see what we can do together! I was down!! 

I finally got my paperwork back with an out-date. It was the end of June, a whole 4 months before my actual out date. I was happy with that! Mostly because I would get to skip a PT test, a physical training test. Now that Josh had submitted his paperwork, we didn’t know when his date was going to be, but we started talking about taking advantage of the military while we were still in. There were benefits to being married in the military. So we decided to get married now and still keep our wedding date for a family get together. 

So we sat down with a calendar. The best weekend was the 14 th of February. Why am I going through this again! But I am glad Josh agreed to not want our anniversary on such an already chaotic day. The next best day was President’s Day. No freakin’ way! First Valentine’s Day and now President’s Day? The day I married my ex??

This was some serious deja vu, at its best, that nobody needs… Josh agrees, of course, he would rather not marry me on the same day, 4 years ago, I married my ex. So it ended up being the week after, but seriously! What are the odds of going through the same thought process the second time?

Before we got married, we did celebrate Valentine’s Day, but we never went out to play in the madness with the rest of the world. We stayed in and did our own thing. However, since we got married in February, we completely bypass Valentine’s Day and celebrate on our anniversary. In all honesty, even if we did get married in July, our original plan, we would have still let Valentine’s Day go. It is too much work for a day of chaos for our lazy asses!

I know a lot of people take Valentine’s Day seriously, but we are not one of them. If you do, I am for it! And more power to you!! 

I definitely have more memories of Valentine’s Day from grade school. You know, when Valentine’s Day was a bigger thing! Well, it was in Japan anyway. Boxes of chocolates for my crush? I have 2 memories that pop up. 

The first one, I was in the 5th grade. I put a heart shaped box full of chocolates, even filled out the to and from, so my name was on there. I should have done it anonymously, because apparently he was brought up well to show respect and be polite. When the end-of-school bell rang, I saw him approach me and I could not take the confrontation for the chocolates I gave him… OMG I was gonna DIE! So I RAN! I think we ran for just about 10 minutes when he caught up to me at the end and properly thanked me for the gift. The relief I felt when he left was real. I about melted to the ground.

The second memory happened when I was in the 8th grade. I was in a Japanese school. I didn’t necessarily have a crush, but there was a guy I kinda liked. The girls were quietly chattering about Valentine’s Day. My two closest friends were talking about getting together at one of their houses to make home made chocolates. They asked me if I wanted to join and I didn’t understand who I was going to go through all that trouble for. They were like ‘for the guy you like!’ I didn’t like him enough to break out in a sweat in the kitchen! But they were too excited for this to not be a thing. In all honesty, I do not remember doing any of that…

I may have ended up buying a box of chocolates to avoid making them. If they were gonna be made with my hands, they better end up in my tummy! 

The two stories will be told in complete detail in the March Newsletter. It may seem like a story to tell this month, but you will understand why when you read it. Stay tuned!!