Tried With Fire - (Ruth Harris Series)

Chapter 1

There's something beautiful about marriage.

There just is.

There's something beautiful about wearing a ring on your finger that symbolises the love flowing through your veins and keeping your heart beating 100,000 times a day. There is something beautiful about belonging to someone, and having their soul belong to you. Isn't that beautiful? Affection, intimacy, but also the ability to be utterly yourself around another person, who doesn't judge, criticise, or belittle you. There is something so beautiful in the sensation of being valued. Respected. Adored. There is something beautiful about seeing your spouse roar with laughter, unburdened by appearances, because they love your sense of humour, understand it, and feel comfortable enough around you to show it.

There is something beautiful about coming home to your family every evening to eat with, talk to, and care about. I can't explain it in words. It is simply beautiful. The very routine of life is beautiful, however lacking in spontaneity it becomes. There is something beautiful about not having to host for your spouse anymore, or dress up or fill every silence with compliments, sex, PDA or even anything at all! There is something beautiful in the ability for two people to feel so calm, so content, so comfortable, that they can spend an evening together in perfect silence, merely staring into each other's eyes, and never feel awkward or like a failed entertainer. That is beautiful to me. Finishing each other's sentences, reading each other's minds, random acts of kindness and goofing around together are all beautiful components of marriage too, but nothing is quite as wonderful as mutual peace. Ah, the peace. I love it.

True mutuality means that no matter how different, how seemingly 'mismatched', how polar opposite two soulmates are, none of those things have any impact on the abundant, genuine, heart-bursting LOVE they share. It means the pair love each other for exactly who they are, who they aren't and who they can be together. Beautiful.

ok ok ruth enuff of the sappy stuff

now tell em how you and hunter scrooed it up

- hailey

I think I will start with a warm, sunny day in January. It's as good a place to start as any. Up to that day, life had been fairly...same-ish. Only, I suppose 'same-ish' isn't the best word: it implies that my life was in some way dull, or plain. That's not accurate at all. My life was 'same-ish' in the sense that, for the first time since I can remember, it was routine. Smooth. Dependable. I could go to bed each night and know, deep within my soul, that I would wake up the next morning to find my loving husband lying senseless beside me, and my daughter bouncing up and down at the foot of my bed ready to claim her spot between us. I knew I had a job to go to in the day time and a family to come home to in the evening. I knew I had a 'proper' life in the palms of my hands, which never ceased to excite and refresh and thrill me. It was a same-ish sort of adventure: fearlessly fun.

Hunter and I were still deeply in love with each other. Olivia, my aforementioned five year old, started primary school in September and already had more friends than I could count. I was leading my own support group in Winchester, as well as authoring books and conducting seminars for anyone who was interested. It was great: I had patients of my own, ideas of my own, money of my own and the freedom to do whatever I wanted with all of them. Fortunately a life of trauma and breakdowns will eventually teach a person to be responsible.
               Speaking of responsibility, Hunter became the regional manager of his company a few years ago. They sell 3D printers, I think. Or they manufacture the printers and sell them on to other companies, or maybe they're just the middle men...- it's something to do with 3D printers, that much I am sure of. (Hailey thinks it's hilarious to take over my body whenever Hunter tries to explain it to me.) I also know that he has moved up from being a salesman, and now manages people and money and makes sure the company's clients are kept happy. He gives presentations and talks about statistics - and despite it heightening the chance of dissociation, his voice was so soothing, so rich, that I often asked him to read dull marketing reports to me at bedtime.