I met my, now fiancée, (why does it feel silly to use that word at my age?) three months before I turned 40. He is six years my senior with two beautiful kids that I’m happy to call my friends. The road to becoming a family has not been easy; the two of us have had to carry the cross of helping two kids understand why I am now a part of their family. This is not an easy task. Children are not renowned for their empathy, and the two of them just want to be ‘normal’.

But about love, let me tell you something silly about me: I remember reading Love in the Time of Cholera as a teenager, a beautiful book by Gabriel García Márquez, and becoming so terribly upset at the entire story. Two young people madly in love who only manage to be together in the autumn of their lives? A time when life feels so final? I couldn’t think of anything worse. I made that story the reason to find my own ‘one’ before I was old, so we could grow together, have a family and a little house with a white picket fence together…

And so I searched, and made mistakes, and obsessed and pursued, but love kept avoiding me and the idea of a regular family felt far away and alien to me. It was simply not in the cards. That’s what I believed.

After a very rough 2017 where a lot of personal inner work needed to happen, I woke on the morning of January 1st, 2018 with the feeling of being alive again. About a month later, Damian reached out to me via the wonderful world of online dating.

We spoke, we flirted and so decided to meet a day later. After three dates and a lot of overthinking, I knew I was with a kind and loving soul. I knew I could stop looking.

We said our ‘I love you’s’ in my native Dominican Republic on our way to the beautiful Saona Island after I invited him to my 40th birthday trip. With every month that passed, we couldn’t stop smiling, we would text and call every day like two teenagers and we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

I met his children and we got along, and so Damian and I began planning our lives together.

In a Hollywood movie, this is where the credits roll. All is good with the world and you leave the cinema wondering why you found the story so awesome even though the formula is always the same! But in this movie, wait no, I mean, real life, this is when the challenges; our fears, our traumas and our past disappointments boil over, and this is where the real test of partnership and love begins.

Religious people would say that God only gives you what you can handle. My mom used to say that God squeezes, but he (a man, go figure!) won’t choke you (grim, I know). Spiritual people speak of the universe saying that what we put out there comes back. I can only say, why the hell us? Life has been for us like a continuous soap opera where plenty of tragedy has made our attempts at enjoying each other’s company more challenging.

We have experienced the most painful loss you can imagine twice over with an excruciatingly painful, difficult decision to terminate our pregnancy, which still affects us to this day; and then, the sudden loss of Mateo, who we conceived with love only to lose him before I started to show. We learned the news of this little miracle and a day later, on my 42nd birthday, he left us.

I guess it was not his time. Then, after that, our own past traumas, and the many pieces of baggage we have collected during our lives, came into our relationship (as they tend to do), causing fractures and unnecessary discord.

I firmly believe we humans do not realise how much our past shapes how we see our present until we are forced to look in a mirror held by our loved ones.

But do not fear, reader, my dear! Despite all the gloominess, we are still here, still in love, still laughing, and determined to respect and support one another for as long as we can. But we have not managed this far alone, we have had help in the form of counselling. And after finding love at a later age, that help is a requirement, a part of the contract that needs to be fulfilled. We have learned to understand each other better; to identify our past traumas, to approach everything with a bit of humour, to support each other emotionally; and above all to have respect for the other person’s emotions and experience.

We continue to learn, and we have our stumbles and falls; but just like Alfred always told Batman, “Why do we fall? So, we can learn to pick ourselves up” (superheroes, fantasy, I live for the stuff).

This year, the toughest for both of us is a leap year and because I can be very hands-on, I proposed to him with a 3D printed copy of his favourite vintage chair ( since the original one cost about €6000, that’s all he is getting until I get that book published or win the Euro millions!). He accepted, by the way.

So, we still have five months to go in 2020 and we fear that they will be as rough and painful as the past seven months have been. But we have a secret weapon: our support for each other. The love we have was forged in the fiery mountain; and no matter the blows, no matter the hits, no matter the poison that comes from outside, if we have managed to get over ourselves for the sake of our union, no external force is breaking this bond.

We are staying put. And as for me and Love in the Time of Cholera, the story is still irritating but I understand Florentino’s resilience and Fermina’s stubbornness now more than ever. I wouldn’t trade my 48-year-old headstrong Damian for anyone.
For all the baggage that came with that love, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Yahaira L. Reyes, July 2020.