I Believe in Settling Down

I believe in settling down. If you had asked me to say that ten years ago, you wouldn’t have gotten me to utter those words no matter what situation you put me in. My parents divorced when I was three, leaving my mom with three daughters to raise on her own. My father was hardly around, choosing bottles of beer and his new wife over his family. I NEVER wanted to get married. I NEVER wanted to have kids. I wanted to be independent and carefree my entire life. I did not want to have to worry about caring for another person, just to be rejected or disappointed later on. So, what changed me? I met my husband, Ryan.

When I met Ryan I was twenty-one and wild as could be. The few years before that were filled with reckless nights that I could barely remember. He doesn’t even know the extent of my wildness and probably wouldn’t care to at this point. He was the total opposite and exactly what I needed in my life at that very moment. I truly believe that he saved me. He not only saved me from becoming just like my alcoholic father, but saved me from myself. He taught me what love was all about.

When Ryan told me that he loved me, I believed that he truly loved me, and only me. We had a bond that I never knew before. I was willing to give up everything for him, not because I had to but because I wanted to. Everything I had been living for at that time was nothing in the grand scheme of things. I wanted to be a better person. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to love someone else besides myself.

I look at the person I am today and the family that I have created, and I’m thankful that I changed. If I had lived my life the way I thought I was going to at eighteen, I would have never known what it was like to love and be loved. I would have never settled down. And that’s one thing I have grown to believe in, settling down.