Yesterday marked the 20 year anniversary of our first official date.

I only remember (and yesterday I forgot…) because it was tax day (April 15th) and my friend was having a party. At that age you look for any excuse to celebrate, so tax day it was.

I had made arrangements to carpool to the party with a friend. I asked her to drive and that way I could “test” the adorable and brilliant boy with the twisted sense of humor I had snuck onto the guest list. My thought was, at some point my friend would have to head home and I would tell my crush that my ride was leaving and I had to go. He would either say goodnight and move on, or be disappointed I was going, ask me to stay longer, offer to drive me home himself. Either way I would know how he felt by the end of the evening.

It got late.

My friend left. I stayed. The cute boy drove me home and twenty years later here we are.

Eating Ooey Gooey cupcakes tonight, picked up on a whim, from the cake shop down the street, it seems hard to believe so much time has passed. Some days it feels like we are still figuring it all out, like we should be further along, and I wonder if it shouldn’t all be old hat and second nature by now. Something we take for granted, something we don’t give a second thought to.

I worry about it sometimes. Question why some days it all feels unsteady, the footing unstable. I realized as I thought about it today, that time and life and all of the things we go through every single day change us.

Life is not a stagnant thing. Our elements are not stable. We are always in flux. Always learning and adapting. Always changing and evolving. Always in the process or on the cusp of becoming another version of ourselves. If we are doing it right, I believe life will always feel a little off kilter as we try to balance who we were with who we are and who we are becoming.

To tell someone “I love you just the way you are, don’t ever change” is a lovely sentiment, but I doubt it is love. To want to preserve someone in amber, keep them always in one state is easy, neat and clean, but it is not life. And denying someone growth is not love.

Life is a messy series of contractions. Of dying and being reborn. Of implosions and explosions. Of ebb and flow. Of calm and surge. We are not the same person from moment to moment. Day to day. Year to year. Life is knowing, as the saying goes, “You can never step in the same river twice.”

Love is waking up and committing yourself to learning this river on this day. Knowing that tomorrow it will have changed and committing yourself to doing it all over again.