​We met when we were young - the kind of young where everything feels uncertain, except the one thing that doesn't.
 
Life didn't make it simple. We lived hundreds of miles apart, different worlds running on different rhythms. And I was in the Army, which meant my time wasn't really mine. The only time I could get to see Becky was on leave. Those windows were everything. Not visits - lifelines.
 
Then came Afghanistan.
 
Multiple tours and months without seeing her. What I had were letters - actual letters, the kind you hold and read more than once. We loved to write old fashioned letters. I wrote whenever I could, because it was the closest I could get to being with her. But behind every one of those letters was something heavier: I missed her in a way I couldn't put into words, and I knew she was carrying her own weight on the other side. The worry. The fear. Hearing about soldiers who didn't come home and quietly wondering if she'd see me again.
 
When I came back, I wasn't the same man. A lot of people who serve come home carrying things you can't always see. PTSD changed things in ways I hadn't expected. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I made a decision - not out of duty, but out of love. I left the Army. Because being with Becky mattered more than anything else.
 
Even then, we were still living at opposite ends of the country. So, we made another decision, the bigger one: we gave up everything familiar, everything comfortable, and chose a life together instead.
 
We moved. Same home, same space, same mornings. No more countdowns. No more goodbyes at the end of a visit. Just us.
 
In 2023, after years of distance, deployments, letters, and choosing each other through all of it - we eloped to Scotland and got married.
 
This isn't a story built on perfect moments. It's built on patience, on showing up when it was hard, on never quite letting go even when life kept pulling in opposite directions. That's what it took. And that's what it means. And this is our story.