Anniversary

And so, tomorrow is mine and my SO's anniversary...  Which anniversary you ask - why it's our 2nd 1st anniversary!  Crazy and confusing I know, but we have had a bit of a hard slog at times to get where were are (as all couples do) and so we were together for a year or so, not really together for a year or so, and now we've been back together for a year...

This last 12 months has been a real adventure ride - he travelled solo for a month or so, and then we met up in South America.  After a bit of an uneasy re-meeting, our adventure began - our opening chapter had us travel through South America: Colombia - Bogota and Cartagena, Argentina - Buenos Aires, Iguazu Falls and Perito Merino, onto Peru - Cusco, Machu Picchu and Lima, Ecuador - Quito and the Galapagos Islands, and finally Chile - Santiago and Valpariso...

Our next chapter had us set up house together in our home town Melbourne, moving into a city apartment and moving back into 'normal' day-to-day life and beginning to 'settle down' until the next opportunity arose...

Our current chapter has seen us travel through the UK - Nottingham (and surrounds) and London, France - Paris, and Sweden - Stockholm and now back to working together, which is how we started in the first place!  There are some interesting things about working together that has sometimes worked well for us and sometimes not, but I think at the moment the understanding and support that we can give each other is extremely good...

In this last year that I've spent with him, I've learned a lot about myself and done things that I never thought I would or could...  I trekked for 4 days, camping along the way to fulfill a long held dream to walk into Machu Picchu (almost concussing myself and meeting a friendly snake along the way!), I put my fear of heights aside and and went para-sailing over the Sacred Valley in Cusco, I went white water rafting in glacial waters, I've seen more countries and used more currencies, and learned to live in more different places and circumstances than I ever thought possible.  And I have done it all because I've had his support - and while I'm pretty confident that I really could achieve most things I put my mind to, I really don't think I'd have done some of them or coped so well with it all without him.

I am a different, more accepting, more adventurous, outwardly deeper thinking, more aware person because I have him in my life.  I am lucky enough to have had him as a work colleague, a lover, a boyfriend, a casual pal, a travel companion, a partner and most of all a very close friend.  We've not had the smoothest of roads to get to where we are, but I love that place and if getting here means going through all that, then I'm glad we did, and did it together.  I would not trade him or us for the world, and luckily I don't have to.

There are so many reasons I love him, some of which you'll gather from what I've already said - but who else would buy me a bunch of flowers because I was nice to a friend and he thought I deserved something nice in return, make the bed because he knows when I see it (even if he's not there to see me when I do) I'll smile, wake up in the morning and look at me with my bed hair and sleepy eyes - half the time with yesterday's make up smudged under them and smile like there's no place in the world he'd rather be, support and encourage me to be me - even when that means turning our dining table (even in the hotel where we currently live) into a scrapping desk, voluntarily come into the bathroom to wash my hair for me because I'm sick, tired or just because he feels like he hasn't done it for a while and he knows that I like it, those and a million other things that don't come to mind right now and would make this post longer than the war and peace that it already is...

So, this one's for you babe - thank you (seems such an inadequate phrase), I love you, happy 2nd 1st anniversary...  I look forward to many more and all the adventures that will get us to each of them!  *mwah*