ON THE OCCASION OF MY 20TH ANNIVERSARY

You'd think it would be easy, for someone like me, to write about something as real and as personal as the love of my life, or the love in my life. But to be honest, it's easier sometimes to write fiction, to make stuff up rather than look long and unblinkingly enough at something like that to actually write about it. Where does one begin?
Chronologies are tedious: how we met, our first kiss, the first person to blurt out, "I love you," all that sort of twaddle which interests no one but the parties involved. It's like a slideshow of tedious vacation photos: "Here's Margaret at the Grand Canyon." "Here's Margaret in front of the Econo Lodge." "There's Margaret eating a sandwich." Very nice, but get me the hell out of here. 
I certainly can't start going on about The Nature of Love. My experience here on this earth is no different than anyone else's and I don't feel qualified to start spouting aphorisms about two souls completing one another or anything remotely Kahlil Gibran-esque. I mean, I could throw some real Hallmark-worthy gems out there if I wanted to, but I wouldn't want anyone to actually take it seriously. I can't claim to know any more about The Nature of Love than the next guy, but I could B.S. my way through it if I had to. I am Irish.
I don't really want to wax maudlin about how blessed I am, either, how it is not lost on me that I have been given a rare and desirable gift. Despite the fact that it's true, acknowledging it can sometimes lead to resentment from others. Someone who never found the real thing, for example, or someone who had it but let it get away, perhaps, might read such a thing, and their honest reaction might be to think, "Yeah, well, how  nice for you. Now shut the hell up, bitch." 
I guess what I can do is write about my own experience, this twenty year pilgrimage I've been on. I am qualified to talk about that. How unlikely our love is. How it has changed over the years, and how it hasn't changed at all. Those moments, unscripted and unexpected, when I find my heart overflowing with affection and gratitude and relief and so many other things. Moments like that still happen.
As humans, we are always struggling with questions like, "Was this fate, or was it chance?" Were we just bouncing along like marbles on a roulette wheel, and just happened to land on double-zero? Or were we placed where we were by some greater force, by some unseen Universal Chess Master? I've given it some thought, quite a bit over the years, actually, and I am leaning a bit towards the "Chess Master" theory. Here's why:
It's ridiculous how opposite Mark and I are in so many ways. Some of them are superficial: he's meat-and-potatoes, I'm fish-and-rice. He likes TV, I well, would prefer music. He likes things neatly planned, I am more of a "we'll see what happens" type of guy. We share very few interests: he finds history and literature to be mind-numbingly boring, and after about ten minutes, I find HGTV to be like watching paint dry. 
Mark has dyslexia. He has overcome it, thanks to his mother, who forced him to keep reading. He can chew through books like a maniac when he's got the time. But for him, the written word is still an effort, it's still something he has to work at. In other words, it's not the best method of communication for him. Then you have me: a crazy reading addict and lover of language. I sometimes find myself tongue-tied when speaking aloud, and sometimes I find that I'm not able to really say what I want to say; and sometimes I say nothing at all. But when I'm writing it down, it's different. I can think, and I can choose my words carefully and deliberately, and it's much easier for me to get my points across. So "Fate" or "Chance" has seen fit to pair up someone for whom the written word is the best way to communicate with someone for whom it is the worst; someone who loves Mexican food with someone who craves Yankee Pot Roast; The History Channel with Food Network. Why? I think it's because we both needed some improving. I needed to improve my verbal communication skills and Mark needed to learn to hear my voice in my writing. I needed to eat more broccoli, Mark needed to eat more jalapeños. It's not so much that we complete one another, but that we encourage one another to become more complete. That, to me, sounds like Fate.
After twenty years, the love that Mark and I share constantly shifts its shapes, sort of like a lava lamp. The white-hot passion of the first couple of years hasn't so much cooled as morphed into something else. Just don't ask me to define exactly what that is. It's a sense that with this other soul beside me, this person, this partner, I will be able to face whatever life throws at me. I can act like an idiot, I can cry, I can cut the world's most toxic farts; in other words, I can let all the masks and all the pretense just fall away, and at the end of the day, he will still be there. Well, maybe after he leaves the room for a few minutes to let it air out.
I do remember the first moment that I fell in love with Mark Taatjes. I will not share it here. I would rather keep that one to myself, like a secret little portrait inside a locket. But I have those moments even now. When I turn to catch him at just that angle, that jawline and those blue eyes can take my breath away. When he talks to animals. When he's singing in the shower and mangles the lyrics to some song, and every time he does it I smile to myself. When he thinks of me first, which is, like, all the time. I fall in love with him all over again, and the edges of my vision go all soft-focus, and I think to myself, "You are a lucky man, Paul Halley." Because I am.