** Saturday august 23rd 2036 **
-taylors pov-
Today joe and I are going to go pick up a surprise for the girls, but before that he said he wanted to take me somewhere. But I smile when I see us going up a familiar road and park in a parking lot, I know all too well... it's the park where we get to be alone, the park where we can be out in nature without everyone around.
"so this is where you wanted to take me" I say with a smirk when we get out of the car and intertwine our fingers as we walk.
"yes, so much has happened lately, and I just wanted to take you somewhere peaceful for us to have a moment alone in the midst of the chaos that is our life" he says and kiss the back of my hand as we walk. "well, you're not wrong. We need moments like this"
We walk in silence, but it's a comfortable silence. After all these years we don't always need to say things to fill the empty space, we are just so comfortable in each other's presence that there is no awkwardness.
He leads me down to a place where we have spent many hours together watching the lake and holding eachother close. The bench overlooking the lake where we can see children playing in the lake on the other side far away from where we are sitting. We can sit here and watch the beautiful nature in front of us, the mountains in the back and forest in front of it.
"it's almost been 20 years love, and there is so much I've wanted to tell you but sometimes it's hard to find the time in our busy life. We have been through so much, God I can't even sum it up. Many professional things spent by each other's sides, but we have also had three kids, a miscarriage, the NICU stay, the kidnapping, the cancer, the car crash, the shooting, and so many little things in between that. God and those are just the things after we had kids. But there was so much before that too, like the cancelation, the masters, the pandemic. It's been a lot my love. But It's also been 20 years of just you and me, and I want to celebrate that" he says, and I have tears in my eyes thinking about all that we have been through. There has been so many things the last 20 years that its overwhelming.
He tilts my head so I'm looking at him and take both my hands in his "I was going to find a cute way to do this, but every time I thought of something big and spectacular, I went back to how it started, how I proposed to you the first time. So Taylor Alison Alwyn, do you want to marry me again?" he asks, and I nod "yes you dork, of course" I say with a laugh.
"Have I known you 20 seconds or 20 years. Now you can actually mean it" he says with a grin and I flick his head, but I can't stop the smile from growing on my face.
There is no one I would rather spend my life with, it's just him and only him. We are like two pees in a pod, a perfect match. If I didn't have him there would be a part of me missing. Im a strong independent woman, I would be able to live without him because I don't need a man to live, but I don't want to live without him. I don't want to go a day of my life without him by my side because he makes me better, he makes me happy, he makes me who I am.
"we have been through hell, so let's just hope that the future is brighter, easier, filled with good things and not just one crisis after another" I say and lay my head on his shoulder. "a wise woman once said that you don't always get everything that you selected on the menu that Is life, you get what you get" he says, and I know he is quoting my honorary doctorate speech.
"She sounds like an excellent woman, you should go and marry her instead" I say and turn to face him so I can poke my tongue out at him. "I already did, and now I intend on marry her again"
"I have the perfect date. The date when everything changed forever, September 28th" I say with a grin, and he kisses me softly "i was thinking that too. The day that neither one of us was the same again. The night when everything changed, the night when my life started again in a new way. The night when I got to call you my girlfriend and I fully intended on never letting you go"
I remember that night, I remember how I admitted to myself that I had fallen hard for him but felt like I was being strung along and ended up running away. It seemed too scary to tell him how I felt because I was so scared of rejection. So much was going wrong in my life at that time, and I couldn't handle losing another thing, so I left him before he could leave me.
"god I was so scared when you said you had left. I knew I had fallen for you, and I was so scared to lose you" he says, and I grin at him "and I was scared that it was one-sided, that you didn't feel the same way as me. It scares me sometimes thinking about what would have happened if you didn't call me and drag me back to that apartment. We wouldn't be here today; we wouldn't have found our happiness and have three beautiful children"
He smiles at me "I think that something else would pull is together. When two people are meant to be together, and there is a golden string holding them together, they will find their way back into each others arms. We would have found eachother again"
I've always loved the idea of fate, that some people are just meant to find one other and we are tied together with a golden string leading you to who you were destined to have in your life. That's not just a partner, but it's also friends and our children, there have been golden strings tying me to the people I have closest to my heart.
But it's especially joe. I kissed so many frogs and experienced so much hurt before I meet him. Turns out the idea I had about what love is, was just false. It was a false narrative I had built up with the bad experiences I had. Love isn't supposed to be like I experienced before him, it is something that's even hard to put into words. Love isn't supposed to be ultimatums and constant tension. Sure my relationship with joe is far from perfect, but at the end of the day both of us know that we are a team that is going to work through the hard stuff together. Even when we fight the possibility of splitting up isn't really on the table. He doesn't scream at me that if I don't do what he wants he is going to leave me.
"it's you and me joe. That's what I need, you. You and the girls are the most important thing in my life. And you're right something would have brought us together again"
**
We get home with the surprise we picked up, and I head the piano being played, Clair de lune, and I know exactly who it is. Ellie is playing, so I go into the music room to listen to her. She has always been so talented at playing the piano. the way her fingers dance across the keys and she plays complex sheet music is just enchanting to watch. She has a real talent for it, she has always learned fast and that's showing with this.
She turns around to look at me and rest her fingers on the keys. There is a smile on her face, but she also seems a bit off. "That was beautiful Ellie. But are you okay?"
She pats the spot next to her on the piano bench and I rest my hand on her small back. "i'm just thinking. And I think better when I'm just letting my fingers play something. I don't know why but I just think better when I'm doing that or dancing" she says, and I brush her hair out of her face. "What are you trying to process"
"i'm just thinking about the future. More specifically Alex. Will we stay together? Or will it crash and burn? I'm a strong woman, I know that, and I would be okay, you have taught me how to be my own person. But it would be really said if it ended" she says, and I ask her if they are having problems "No we are fine, perfect. Which makes me scared of losing that"
"We never know what the future might bring, if we will stay together with the people we are with or what will be waiting for us around the next corner. That's the beautiful thing and scary thing about life, not knowing what is coming next. But a wise man just told me that if two people are meant to be together, but they part, there will be a golden string pulling them back together" I tell her and kiss her forhead.
"Kitten!" we hear kenzie yell from the other room and Ellies eyes light up, so we go to see the new addition to our family.
Kenzie is sitting on the floor petting the new kitten, a tiny Scottish fold, and aurora is sitting beside her petting the kitten too. "We got a new kitten?" Ellie beams.
All three girls sit with the new kitten who is clearly nervous about being in a new house but seems to like the kids petting her.
"kenzie do you want to tell the girls the kittens name, what's her name?" I ask her and kenzie grins "her name is karma" she says, and the other girls agree that it's a perfect name. "Just like the album moms' fans are still convinced exists, but it doesn't. It's been years and they are still asking about it" Ellie says and poke her tongue out at me.
Benjamin comes down the stairs and sees the new kitten. They look at one another as he comes closer, like they are trying to see if they are going to be civil or get into a fight. Bringing a new pet into a house with another pet is not easy because you never know if they are going to get along. But Benji just looks at karma before coming over to me, so I pick him up.
"Did you like your little sister Benji? Isn't she cute" I coo the cat that clearly don't know what the hell I'm talking about or care. He is a lazy cat that has been here alone for a few years now so it's going to be an adjustment to have a baby kitten join the family.
"Girls your dad and I have something to tell you" I tell the girls and they look up at us but are only half interested because they would rather focus on the new kitten. "Your dad asked me to marry him again. So on the 28th of September we are renewing our vows" I tell them, and they chuckle.
"Mom you're already married" kenzie says and burst out laughing. "we aren't actually getting married, its renewing your vows. Which people do when they want to celebrate that they have been together for a long time. We have been together for 20 years, and married for 15 years, so we want to celebrate that" joe says.
"Now you can mean it when you sing have, I known you 20 seconds or 20 years" Aurora observes, and I tell her that's exactly what joe said.
-ellies pov-
I'm sitting out by the pool writing in my diary where I reflect about my life. It's important to take time to stop and take a look at your life and what is going on. This last year it's constantly been something going on and I felt suffocated, I felt like I could never properly breath.
Almost ten years ago I was kidnapped, Adam took me from the safety of my playroom in the house that was supposed to be heavily secured. In the instant he did that my life would never be the same. There is no going back from that, there is no forgetting that. My innocence was ripped away, and I remember every detail. In the beginning I didn't remember much, I had blocked it out because it was that traumatic, but now I remember everything. Even though it hurts, and some nights it makes me wake up screaming, I want to remember because that's the way I can process it. The body remembers trauma, even if your consciousness doesn't remember it your body does. So in the beginning I was having reactions that I didn't understand because I didn't remember the details. But now I know that if I have a panic attack or a dissociative episode that there was something that triggered me.
I don't even know how many hours I've spent in therapy working through what happened, but it has made me stronger, and I have a sense of closure in the fact that I at least know what happened. I don't have to wonder about why a certain thing triggered because now I remember the details, the painful details but they are also important so I can understand why my mind works the way it does now.
I can never forgive or forget what happened, I think that's impossible and not realistic. A life altering event isn't something you forget, and I don't know if I have forgiveness in me for Adam. He was the adult and did something unspeakable to a child, in my eyes that can't be forgiven. But even though you don't forgive or forget you can still move past it and look to the future. If I keep holding onto it like a part of my personality it will always be a hinder in me reaching for the life I want for myself. If I don't let myself move on, he will win in a way, he will keep me trapped in that week that changed my life. I don't want him to have that power over me, I don't want him to have the satisfaction that he did something to me that I can't live with.
You would think that the world figured that the kidnapping would be a life changing event so I would be given peace to heal, but then fate throws at you. I ended up with a life-threatening eating disorder, which in hindsight was triggered by the kidnapping, and then the period where I was self-harming. I didn't want to admit it at the time, but it was a way of coping with what happened, it was a delayed reaction when I started to remember more and more things about what happened down in that basement.
After that I thought that I may get to move on and build my life, but then I got shot, yet another thing thrown at me. That wasn't even because of something with me or my life, I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Even though he was there to kill someone else I was still shot, and the sound of the bullet and how it felt when it entered my leg is something I won't forget either. The trial is pending, they say it might happen in November or something, but at least this time It wasn't about something I did, or my parents did, it was something that happened that didn't have to do with the kidnapping, I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. But what it did was that it took away mt sense of security at school, I don't think I will ever walk through the halls of that school again and not remember the sounds of children screaming and the sound of a gun shooting.
We all have things that change our lives, and I've had my fair share of those events. I wish I could just know that something new won't happen in the future, but I don't have that guarantee. No one knows what will be waiting around the next corner. My mom, which is my favorite person in the world, says to me that the uncertainty about life is both scary and beautiful, you never know what is going to come around the corner.
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