I always tell people that life is fair. The irony here is that I never quite believed it myself. I’d watch (and even help) people reach new heights, and yet, I’d feel like I was falling further and further behind. Echoes of my past told me I wasn’t worth the same, and that some people deserved more than others.
“It’ll hurt for now, but keep pushing on, and there’ll be a brighter day”, I’d tell people. I truly believed in what I said, but only really that it could happen to others. And so, this past year, I was happily proven wrong. It has been one year since my last birthday, and never in a lifetime could I have imagined where I’d be right now. In the midst of the global chaos that has hit so many, here I stand, with more positive changes than ever before. “Why me?”
This time last year, my dear Ilinda and I were just getting to know each other better. We had been dating for just under three months, and warm summer days were making it difficult not to dance on fields of lilies. Every place and every smell just seemed to rip open a new bag of adventures. We’d get home from work and drink tea and chat and barely get enough sleep, whilst we bonded over our pasts and our international backgrounds. Neither of us really felt at home anywhere, and we’d been searching high and low for some semblance of “home”.
It represented over 10 years of waiting, praying and hoping
Fast forward till September, in UmeĂĄ, Sweden, where I put the first of two rings on Ilinda’s finger. That ring represented no spur-of-the-moment decision. It represented over 10 years of waiting, praying and hoping she’d be out there somewhere. It represented an oath I had made to myself, after my first dating experience in the 2000s, when I swore to never date again unless I intended to marry. In fact, after meeting Ilinda, I made it very clear to her that I’d stay friends with her “for now”. And I don’t regret it.
Some say that love happens in an instance. I don’t necessarily agree with this when it comes to finding a partner. I believe that in order to fall in love, you first have to “fall in friend” with someone. She was by far the best friend I had ever had, because she knew how to listen. She knew that look in my eyes when I had had a bad day (and I’m very good at hiding such things). She… well, you get it. What I’m trying to say is that starting my journey with her a year ago is what set in motion a chain of events I could’ve never prepared for.
At the end of November, we started preparing for the wedding that just felt way too soon to be realistically accomplished. Our wedding date for February 29 had been set, and we barely had time to plan and have our engagement party squeezed in between Christmas eve and New year. Three months. That’s how long we’d have to make our wedding happen. And we made it happen. We even made it to Andorra and back amid a pandemic on the rise.
Against all odds, we defied the pandemic
Pandemic. That’s really one of the keywords marking our new marriage. Against all odds, we defied the pandemic. We didn’t go down with it; we rose to the challenge and it made us more united than ever. Amid uncertain times, we were leaving our old homes, leaving Vaasa, and even leaving our jobs. We left our old lives behind to start a new one together in the Helsinki region, where I unexpectedly got a new job right at the peak of layoffs and people becoming jobless. If that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is.
Our move to our new apartment in Leppävaara, Espoo happened in just three weeks. The number three must be our lucky number, because during those three weeks, we not only searched, found and bought our first apartment, but both me and Ilinda were moving, for the third time since our wedding week. The same week in May that we had initially planned to have our wedding (because we would both have had vacation at the same time), we were now moving in together and eagerly waiting to start our new jobs.
Today is my birthday. For the first time in my life, I am genuinely thankful to exist. I am amazed and humbled that despite being born into this life with nobody to call my own, I now know where my home is–and that is with you, my amazing Ilinda.
PS. Check out the video from our wedding day!
Finntrovert 
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