So yesterday was my one year anniversary and I'm still smiling from it. It wasn't nearly as fancy or as well planned out as our six-month anniversary, but it was still a night with Chris, so I was so happy.

For our six-month anniversary, we had dinner at the fanciest, most expensive steakhouse in town, then went to see Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, then spent the night together. For our one year anniversary, we had dinner at Boston Pizza, then went for coffee at Tim Horton's, then he dropped me off at my grandma's and went home at the end of the night. It's kind of sad, in a way. Not because I'm someone who demands expensive things all the time, but because it would have been nice to have had things planned out. Like I said, I'm still very happy I got almost a whole night with Chris all to myself. That never happens anymore.

At first, it was rough. We've been fighting a lot lately and I wasn't really sure how last night was going to go. We exchanged gifts in the truck (he got to drive the truck without one of his parents tagging along! Yay!) and he was very happy with his season one of Supernatural on DVD and his new book Mr. T versus Chuck Norris. I felt bad, because he always gives me such beautiful and romantic gifts, and I always give him things that he likes, but that are thoroughly unromantic. He gave me a beautiful unicorn jewelry box. It's a round shape with a rearing unicorn standing on the top and it has a Celtic design. It's absolutely gorgeous. He also gave me cast iron antique horse bookends, which are also beautiful, but extremely heavy. I could barely lift them. I love my gifts so much! Anything would have made me happy if it came from Chris, but these are exceptionally wonderful. I can't stop staring at my unicorn jewelry box on my dresser and smiling.

We had no idea where we were going, because neither of us know Toronto very well (yet I've been living here for nearly a year now... go figure) and we ended up driving aimlessly for a long time. Chris hates driving on highways and I quickly learned that driving on the highway with him is a nightmare and to avoid it at all costs. He's not comfortable driving that fast and he gets flustered and nervous and misses all his exits, then snaps at whoever's in the car with him when they try to help, which happened to be me last night. We had a map with us and he kept telling me to read the map for him and tell him where to go, but he knows that I can't read maps very well. I tried my best to read it and help him, but I kept misreading things and getting confused and making mistakes and he got mad at me for it. Finally, I stopped trying to read the map for him. Every time I tried, I got snapped at and I just felt stupid and embarrassed, so I gave up. I handed the map to him instead, then he got mad at me for that and snapped at me that he couldn't read the map while he was driving.

We got to Boston Pizza in damp spirits, but cheered up over dinner. We were both starving and hadn't eaten all day so we completely cleaned up everything we ordered between the two of us, including dessert, which was delicious. Our waiter was an idiot, though. After our meal, he left us waiting there for fourty minutes for the bill, then he came up to us at almost ten o'clock, telling us we needed to leave because they were closing and asked us if we wanted the bill. I snapped at him that that's what we'd been waiting for for the last fourty minutes and he apologized, saying that he thought we were just "hanging out". Wouldn't we have ordered coffee or something if we were just "hanging out"? Poor Chris felt awful, because he accidentally left one less twenty dollar bill than he should have and the waiter had to come chasing us in the parking lot for the money, but I assured him the waiter knew that he had just miscounted. Most people who don't want to pay for their meals skip out on them completely, rather than just leaving less. That seemed to make him feel better.

After dinner, he asked me what I wanted to do. I told him we could see a movie, but that I wanted to just sit and talk with him somewhere because it's been months since we've been able to just sit and talk face to face. He seemed like he really wanted to see a movie, though, so I said we could see a movie, but then he got mad again, saying that I should just tell him what I wanted to do and when I explained to him that I just didn't want him spending a lot more money on me that night, so talking over coffee would be better than seeing a movie, but that I thought he wanted to see a movie, which is why I said to see a movie, he snapped at me that driving the truck around aimlessly trying to decide what to do was costing him a lot of money. He is right about that. I always forget that, because I don't drive. I am concerned about him spending a lot of money, because I know he needs it for school, so I always try to look for things that cost the least amount of money for us to do, but I don't think about how much money it's costing him to drive the car around while I think of something less expensive to do. I apologized and told him he's right, but that I forget about that a lot because I don't drive.

We ended up stopping at Tim Horton's for coffee, but that was rough, too. We mostly bickered and argued and I got fed up and said all we do is fight now and he got mad and told me that all I do is focus on the bad stuff. I hate it when he says that to me. It really hurts. I'm still trying to figure out if it hurts because it's true and I don't want to admit it, or if it hurts because it's not true and it's painful to know that he thinks that. In any case, it still hurts. I just kind of fell silent and didn't say much else. I talked a bit about how I feel like left out with my friends because they're all old enough to drink and go to casinos and gamble and I'm not, and even if I was, I'm uncomfortable with being around that stuff, anyway. It never used to be a problem to hang out with them in high school, because none of my friends really did that stuff and they enjoyed just being with me. Now, they usually want to go to bars or casinos, occasionally a club or two and when I ask them if they could do something that I could be included in (which I don't do very often, because I feel bad for doing it), they say sure but then make a big deal about how I'm inconveniencing them and how they'd rather be drinking and partying than hanging out with me. It really sucks. I don't know, I don't think it's a bad thing to have my morals. I'm happy living by them. I don't think I should be made to feel bad for having them. Someone told me once that I let my whole life be controlled by fear, and since then, I can't get that out of my head. I know it's not completely true, maybe in some respects, but that's not the full picture. I'm happy with the way I am. Why do I need to be made to feel bad about it?

Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent. We got back to my grandma's house and things immediately went from rocky to wonderful. My whole family was in bed and Chris said he could stay for a while, so I turned on the TV and we watched Babar, because there was nothing else on. It was kind of tense, but I don't even know how this happened; one minute, we were sitting apart from each other on the couch, looking moodily at each other and the next minute, we were in each other's arms, sobbing and telling each other how sorry we were for everything and how much we love each other. It was so beautiful. We've recently been going through a really hard time. I'm not going to go into the details, but about a week or so ago, we got into the most horrible fight and I was so hurt and furious that I took everything that he ever gave me and everything that reminded me of him and put it away because I couldn't stand to look at any of it. Since then, the relationship's been extremely strained, but last night was such a release. We needed to see each other face to face. I needed to know by looking into his eyes that he was truly sorry and that he really did love me. He needed to know by looking into my eyes how badly he hurt me and how much I still loved him. We finally got that and we just held each other and cried for an hour, but it was a good cry. It was a release cry; like we were getting rid of all the bad stuff so that we could start over fresh and experience good times again. It felt so good to be held after going through all of that alone. I know that didn't magically make all our problems disappear, and I also know that I'm not going to be able to fully trust and forgive him for a long time, but last night was the breaking of the wall between us. It couldn't have happened on a better night than our one-year anniversary.

By one in the morning, Chris said he had to go because he needed to work the next day and he told his parents he'd leave around midnight, so I walked him to the door. We didn't stop kissing goodnight for fifteen minutes and he actually picked me up and was half-way to the truck with me, about to take me back with him when he remembered how angry my grandparents would be with him for kidnapping me and he reluctantly put me back down. I was so sad; I wanted to go with him, and of course I sat up, worrying about him like I always do until he texted me, saying he got home safe.

Our one year anniversary turned into the brand new start we both needed.