I married my high school sweetheart when I was nineteen, going on twenty.
We had been out of high school for a year. And you probably think that's crazy, or as most people believe, we were too young to get married. While most of my friends from high school were getting alcohol poisoning from doing kegstands at a college frat party or picking out dorm room furniture, I was a newlywed. Everyone goes their different ways after high school, and so did I, mine was just different than most. I had decided to marry the guy who stole my heart throughout my last years of high school.
I met my husband when I was sixteen working my first job.
We went to homecoming, football games, and prom together. We walked across the same stage, the same day on graduation. And instead of going into adulthood alone, I got to give it a go with my best friend.
Many of my friends and family didn't understand us getting married so early.
They thought we were crazy, and maybe we were, but we had found something many people spend so much time looking for, and that was true love, as corny as it sounds. But as many people my age spend this time searching for someone to spend their life with, we had already achieved that part of our lives, and now planning a future together.
We've heard it all, the whole "you'll regret getting married young" speech, that I'm too young to know what love is or that I didn't give myself enough time outside of high school to meet other people. I'm a firm believer that if something or someone makes you happy, you seize that feeling. And I had found someone incredibly special who made me feel just as special.
Don't get me wrong, we've struggled, especially with a husband being active duty military.
You don't get married at twenty and not struggle learning the ways of becoming an adult. But every problem we have faced, we faced together as a team. We have got to witness each other do amazing things so far in life like promotions at jobs or ace projects in college, as well as watching each other grow as individuals and as a couple. As a young couple, we still chase our own dreams, we just support one another along the way.
I am now twenty-three, and I have been married to my best friend for three years.
We have a beautiful daughter who is eighteen months old. We are achieving so much more than we could imagine for ourselves and there is no one else I would rather be doing it with.
With high school in the past, and being married with our own little family forming, I don't regret one thing. If anything I wish I was still as gutsy as teenage me. It's been worth every up and down along our journey and I can't wait to see what the next fifty years hold.