A month before I turned thirteen, my world was turned upside down. My mother lost her fight with cancer, and my life quickly changed. I turned thirteen and had a party that had no business being had, and before Christmas, my father and I had moved in with family in a different town. That’s when I met Aaron. We’d been friends with the same people, and he knew my family through the local boy scouts. I’m still not sure how it happened, but we turned sixteen and the rest is, as they say, history. We both went to a friend’s birthday, where he asked me out and I (being a teenager and loving the drama of it all) made him wait two weeks, when I came back from vacation, for my answer.

Now, six years later, we’re almost completely different people than we were then, and still crazy about each other. When we were first got together, I was a sixteen year old, angry at the world for the loss of her mother and the way her life was going. He’s made me feel whole again, put back the pieces and made me a better person for it. He’s given me love and confidence, and made me comfortable with being a woman, something I’d never felt before. I still miss my mom every day, even more now that I’m planning our wedding and I wish she were here to guide me through it. I wonder how it would be if she was still alive, but in some strange way, I feel like she’s sent me this person as a gift, as a way of telling me that she thinks my life will turn out alright. And, knowing that Aaron will be waiting at the end of the aisle, I’m starting to feel that way too.