“I was married once before. It was a 300-person wedding in a...

“I was married once before. It was a 300-person wedding in a massive Catholic church. With a big, grand dress that cost $1400. It was a fairy tale dream and I thought it was perfect. But within a year, things started to feel off. He became increasingly critical of me. And I found myself getting more and more subdued. Then a year into our marriage, he told me that he was having an affair. Suddenly I was thrown back into the whole dating thing. It was like: ‘Oh no. Not this again.’ But a few years later I met Thylar on an app, and right away things felt different. He accepted things about me that had been rejected in the past. Superficial stuff, like TV shows and movies and bands. If I wanted to put a Dr. Who decal on my car, he wouldn’t question it. He was even more eccentric than me. Thylar is obsessed with a convenience store called Buccee’s. Their mascot is a beaver. He loves that beaver. He has like twenty mugs with that beaver on it. Both of us were coming from a similar place. We’d both dealt with infidelity in the past, so neither of us were in a rush to get married. We enjoyed taking things day-by-day. And we went on like that for two years, until one morning I woke up to the sound of Thylar groaning. He was kicking his right leg into the air. When I called 911, the dispatcher told me he was having a stroke. I rode with him in the back of the ambulance. He kept pointing at his eyes, then his chest, then at me. He began squeezing my ring finger, and tapping it. I knew what he was trying to say, but I just chalked it up to panic. Even after his recovery, I never brought it up. Because I didn’t want him to feel pressured. The next summer we held a live music benefit for his medical bills. After the third song, Thylar walked up to the microphone. He told everyone that he’d learned a lot from his experience. And that if you find a bright spot in this world, you should hang onto it. Then he proposed to me in front of all our friends and family. We were married two months later. It was a spot where we loved to go hiking. Far off the trail, deep in the woods, beneath some great arching trees. There were only two witnesses. And I wore a $75 dress.”