Growing up, every little boy fantasizes about their perfect wedding (mine will take place in the spring, of course, and it will be a tent wedding in the middle of a big open green field ringed with wildflowers. The colors will be lilac and white, and while I’m not sure about my hair or suit yet I do have a pinterest board going for when that special day comes). Something that never figured into my plans, though, was that I would end up married to my 6’5” twenty-year-old roommate named Axel.
Marriage sneaks up on you, as I’ve learned. One day you’re sharing an awkward laugh about how your toaster either sets everything on fire or turns it soggy, and the next he comes home while you’re washing the dishes and hugs you from behind and you’ve never felt more loved. It’s nice to be married, and really not as scary as you think it might be. You don’t feel as weighed down as you would imagine and you definitely don’t have to do any weird sex stuff (that’s what his long-distance girlfriend is for). You just come home after a long day of staring at your computer and share dinner while you both decompress about each of your respective last 10 hours. After this you play a game or two of chess while sipping some herbal tea (married people love herbal tea) and then it’s off to an early bed.
Marriage isn’t all about receiving. You have to give, too, and you do. You remind him to go grocery shopping after his fifth day in a row of only eating avocado toast. You scold him for hacky sacking when he should be paying attention to his online class. You help him try to find the items he misplaced, like his wallet or laptop (this is how you spend most of your time, he loses things a lot). You pay your fair share of the essential oil diffuser he bought to make the house smell less like trash.
I haven’t yet had the wedding of my dreams or the fairytale courtship that’s embarrassingly close to the plot of hit CBS sitcom “How I Met Your Mother,” but it turns out that I am married, and to my roommate, no less, a mountainous former rower nicknamed after a part of a wheel. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Categories: 8, march 23 2021, michael haydon