wait, i take that back.

this is my Declaration of PERFECTION.

marty and i are completely + utterly perfect for each other.  there is no other human walking this planet that is more perfect for me than this man. on our wedding day, i told him that forever would never be long enough, and i never meant words more than i meant those. the idea that someday neither of us would exist, or that our love would no longer be an element changing the world in a teeny tiny way makes me woozy. there is nothing in this world that i believe in more than the love we found in each other. when people tell us that our love inspires them, i absorb every single word. i hang on them, because our love inspires me too. when people say they wish they had a love like ours, i never even think to discourage the thought because i would want it too if it wasn’t mine already. i am so proud of what we have, and how hard we are ALWAYS willing to work to keep it. i believe we are absolute perfection. we were made for each other. if i could, i would wake up every single morning and shout from mountains about how happy i am in this life. okay, maybe not everyday, because i’m human and i get a lot of bad ones too.

…so when i make posts about us, or i share little snippets of our life together on social media, you’re seeing our truth. you’re seeing and scrolling through our happiness. none of these moments are fabricated or created out of thin air. we do some really cool shit, and he says some pretty hilarious things and we travel to some awesome places and we take cheesy photos. are they lit really beautifully and composed in a creative manner? hell yes. because guess what, i was born that way. i’m a creative who much prefers things that are aesthetically very pleasing. don’t hate on me because i take the extra time to make it pretty. i don’t judge you for not taking a perfectly focused photo (unless you’re my mom! haha!) making creative choices doesn’t mean i am not being truthful about our life, or who we are or what our relationship is all about. i’ll brag all day long about how perfect i think we are. i’ve got no shame in our game! but we will ALWAYS handle our dirty laundry ourselves, thankya!

but now there is all this talk about how we don’t share enough of our bullsh*t on social media and we’re all a bunchaphonies who only share the “shiny” + “happy” parts of who we are, and you know what?
I THINK THAT’S CRAP.

if there is anyone who scrolls through my Instagram or Facebook newsfeed and believes for one second that there isn’t any madness behind my “carefully curated social media presence,”  [insert eye roll] you are so wrong. seriously, you could not possibly be more wrong.

marty + i are so ridiculously perfect together, but it’s certainly not because of the shiny moments. it’s in our darkest moments that we shine. you know, the ones we don’t share with the world…
the moments that break us
that cause us heartache
and make us cry
and make us angry.

…THAT is where our perfection lives.

it lives in our ability to communicate.
it lives in our desire to be better, together.
it lives in our decision to grow together, and not apart.
it lives in the peace of mind of knowing neither of us will ever give up.
it lives in the fact that doing life together is the only choice.
it lives in the fact that we don’t feel it’s even a choice, it just is.
and we like it.

behind those cohesively crisp life squares and status updates lies our own personal struggles. and you already know, the struggle is very real. somehow because i don’t share every single fight, or every single thing we bicker about, somehow we aren’t be real.

no one needs to know the inner struggles of my marriage in detail. what people need to stop doing is scrolling and comparing. people need to stop telling themselves that someone else’s grass is always greener than their own and that somehow they are failing. because let me tell ya, our grass wasn’t green all summer, and do you wanna know why? because we never freaking watered it. …i’m talking about our real grass now, we actually had the best summer ever guys. ha! but really, our grass dies too when we don’t water it. and there have been plenty of days where our grass was beyond dead. can i stop talking about grass now?

i wrote this because i hate the idea that people think we are perfect and don’t fight and don’t struggle. that we don’t bicker and want to kill each other from time to time. we do all of those things.
and when we do, we’re really good at it.
seriously, we are.
like, the best.

…i feel like people are somehow cheapening our life when they assume we’re either hiding our battles, or that everything is just perfect because of what we don’t share. stop taking the credit from us damn it! we work really hard at our marriage, seriously. and i also wrote this because a friend of mine sent THIS to me today. i cried because so much of it is true and it makes me sad how things have changed, but it also made me angry that people believe that the struggle doesn’t exist behind our pretty photographs + status updates and that somehow we’re to blame for this imbalance. getouttahere with that noise.

you tell your story, and i’ll tell mine.
stop comparing. start living.
stop worrying about what everyone else is
doing and start fighting for love.
make your own rules.

no one puts baby in the corner.