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Drawing Dragons

19 years later: Drawing Dragons Day 111

19 years ago, I started dating this blond-haired boy. He had a deep voice and a funny smile. He was quick with a joke. He liked gatorade and Chips Ahoy.

We began our relationship with a contract, set in very specific terms. We accidentally left it on the choir teacher’s desk. I still imagine our choir director picking up that piece of notebook paper and wondering about these kids who were already making promises to each other: she would kill all the spiders. He would let her wear hats.

How could we have known the journey we were on, the way we would change in each other’s eyes, and the way this day would feel 19 years later? Busy. Big. Impossible. Small. Just right.

Loving him isn’t complicated; it’s like coming home. And I’m sure there are a billion better ways to say it, but really, he just makes me happy.

And he drives me a little crazy too. Just enough to keep me on my toes, to make me aware how lucky I am, in the quiet of a Saturday night or the bustle to find shoes and car keys.

He makes sense to me.

And in a world where things are way more dramatic and big and fluffy and ugly and weird and wild and uncomfortable, well, that is more than enough: to have someone you understand, and can see spending 19 more years with.

So here’s a dragon that feels like 19 — smooth and comfortable and all the right lines but still needing a little more work.

The feeling is there. The lines will change with the years, as we continuously relearn who were are together and how we can love each other better and bigger.

I didn’t believe it at 17 — our love was as big as it could get — but I can see it now. There’s so much more in front of us.

Dragon sketch with long neck in pencil no arms

So keep creating,

Kate