anniversary – Page 2

Five

Earlier this month, Ruth and I spent a long weekend in the North to celebrate five years together as a couple. Technically, I suppose that we should have celebrated it the previous month, but we were up in Edinburgh at the time: we had, after all, first gotten together during our 2007 trip to Edinburgh, in lieu of actually watching any comedy.

Because of our change of date, we ended up celebrating the fifth anniversary of our relationship… on the same weekend as the fifth anniversary of QParty, the celebration of Claire and I’s relationship. QParty in turn took place five months after Claire and I changed our names, which itself happened on approximately the fifth anniversary of Claire and I meeting for the first time.

In Ruth and I’s case, this five year mark isn’t just a excuse to celebrate our success as a couple, but also to celebrate the success of she, JTA and I as a “vee“. Our unusual arrangement hasn’t been without its share of challenges: many of them challenges that more-conventional couples don’t face. But here we are, looking back on a busy five years and… well… still kicking ass.

She and I have been talking, on and off, about the idea of a party that the pair of us would like to throw, a little way down the line: something to celebrate us as a couple. Nothing quite so grand and enormous as Ruth & JTA’s wedding (what could top that!), but some variety of event. Needless to say, you’ll hear about it when it’s time to!

Year One – A Happy Post That Everybody Will Misunderstand To Be An Unhappy One

Ruth and I celebrated the first anniversary of our being a couple, this weekend. She came down to Aber and we took the steam train up to Devil’s Bridge, wandered around the waterfalls, and spent a good few hours sitting in a pub (pretty much the pub in Devil’s Bridge, tiny place that it is) playing darts.

I’ve never really been one for celebrating anniversaries. A birthday is an ocassion to go out for a pint, and new year is when you… well, that’s when you go out for a pint, too. But it was really quite good to spend some time with Ruth (something I’ve not had a lot of while she’s been living in Oxford, this summer) doing the coupley things we don’t often get to do.

Fuck knows where we’re going to be in another year’s time. If her plans play out the way she’d like, she’ll be leaving Aberystwyth again this time next year, and I’m still going to be here. Neither of us are particularly confident about the prospect of pulling off a long-distance relationship that will work in the same kinds of ways that the relationship we have now does, and I’ve suffered a smidgen of anticipatory grief about the possibility us coming to an end.

On the other hand, we’re both keen to see what we can do to make sure it doesn’t have to end unless it absolutely has to, and that’s reassuring. And I am, as always, optimistic. We’ve got today. We’ve always got today.