Six

On our fourth anniversary, I jokingly said, “We have now outlasted a car lease term.” People celebrate their wedding anniversary with material things. Paper. Diamond. Ivory. Wood. Gold. Silver. Unpopular opinion: I think we should celebrate wedding anniversaries with really mundane milestones. A car lease. A dishwasher’s official warranty. A mortgage amortization period. A dog’s life span. It’s morbid, but it’s real. And in a sense, romantic. (Like that few minutes in the opening of the animation “Up”)

People often romanticize marriage as if it were something meant to be perfect. “I married my best friend.” “You complete me.” “I found the one.” Maybe that’s the life of some perfect hetero couples with ideal skin and facial structure and family support structure, but that’s not us (not for queer people, certainly not for brown people. Also, ewww to fucking your best friend. Also, you don’t want to know the amount of frogs I have to sleep with to get to the one)

Our marriage is messy. It requires hard work. I fight loud. I am stubborn. I project manage every aspect of our lives. I want things done right away, and things done right the first time. I hid behind my twisted dark humor when I’m upset. I threaten to quit my job or move to a different country at least twice a month. Don’t get me started on his flaws.

Our life is messy. We changed jobs during the pandemic. We missed out on our chance to have children. We almost moved for work, and then we didn’t. We constantly adapted, pivoted, and, most difficultly, stayed in the restlessness together, as a team.

I guess it is true that I could not have asked for more. I didn’t even know all of this was even possible, growing up in a country where same sex marriage did not even exist or mentioned as a concept. Yet, here we are, measuring dishwasher replacement on a long weekend, getting full mud-paws from our dog on our white T-shirts, fighting loudly about how to fill in car warranty payment info, passive-agressively debated who cooked more and who did more dishes. In a sense, it’s romantic. That, as white women did say that one time, love is love is love is love. Queer love is just like any other love, just as mundane and petty and messy and flawed.

And maybe just as beautiful and joyful as well.

(Except we have better fashion, and instead of raising children, we spend money on dog treats)

Happy sixth anniversary. If we have a full-grown child (Asian), they would have finished their first medical (including residency) or law degree (including articling). Less if I discipline them and teach them Maths early.