I remember the first time I kissed a boy. I was in first grade (floozy!) and huddled with some of my friends on the playground at recess. They dared me to walk up to Jacob Goldman*, tap him on the shoulder, and plant one on him. I don’t remember why first graders were thinking about kissing or why they chose Jacob in particular (proximity? friendly demeanor? gorgeous curls?), I just know that I marched right up to him, interrupted his basketball game and did it. I ran back to my friends, my hand over my mouth in a fit of giggles. Jacob was red cheeked and confused. I felt pretty bad ass. Until I got on the bus at the end of the day.

Mike Prescott, one of Jacob’s friends and one of the boys who was playing basketball with him, caught me in his sights as soon as he got on the bus. He walked up to my sticky green pleather seat and said “You kissed Jacob.” I burst into giggles again, unable to control myself. He seemed less amused and just shook his head. “You know, that’s how you get AIDS.” He walked away and my face dropped.

I’m in the midst of a blogistential crisis. The struggle is real and the self-induced pressure could make a diamond shoot out of my ass.

Truth be told, I’m feeling like I lost myself a little bit here. I started this blog because I wanted to write. I wanted a place to put my writing and a place to direct people when they were thinking about maybe hiring me. Somewhere along the line, I’ve gotten completely distracted from that. The writing has almost become a secondary thing. I jot down ideas on an editorial calendar (fueled by Pinterest and social media and other blogs and every other little bit of information that is being shot out at me like fine glitter that I can’t shake off) and I feel like I must make them come to fruition. And regularly. Or else.

But what am I doing?

Like last year, I want to shine a little bit of light on all different sorts of love this February with a Love Letters miniseries. Every Friday I’m featuring posts about love from some fabulous guest bloggers—and they’re not the typical boy meets girl, cue fireworks kind of love story. These stories show that love comes in all different shapes and sizes—and all of them should be celebrated. Today’s post is mine—with a little help from Bad Dad.

When I was my daughters’ ages, true love looked a lot like fairy tales: it was all handsome princes with dazzling smiles and bright white horses (shudder). By college, it had turned into hot guys with dangerous smiles who would buy me a drink (again, shudder).

But do you know what true love really is? It’s being driven completely insane by someone and loving them anyway. It’s choosing to remain with a person every single day, even though they are utterly incapable of properly loading a dishwasher.

That, in a nutshell, is my husband and I. We are completely mismatched and could not see the world more differently. He is all logic and reason (and stubborn. A whole lot of stubborn). I am all feelings and emotions (and also maybe a little bit stubborn. But very little…).

But we agree on one important thing: we love each other.

So, in the spirit of love that is real and true and not from the pages of a mystical storybook, we give unto thee two lists. One contains five incredibly valid reasons that he drives me insane. The other is a list of drivel that you probably don’t want to read anyway. 😉

Can we talk about the Always Superbowl commercial for a second? It hit me hard. I cried actual tears. My husband looked at me like I was crazy, much like when our oldest daughter was born and I would randomly burst into tears while sitting on the couch watching TV.

I hit puberty at nine. Nine. My daughter will turn nine this summer. When I think back, that was the time period that changed everything. I was suddenly conscious of my body; uncomfortable with it. From boys in my class noticing and mentioning how much I had grown (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) to grown men starting to look at me in a way I hadn’t experienced before, my body suddenly seemed like this foreign thing that I had no control over. I hadn’t grown accustomed to it yet and felt like I needed time to understand it, yet it felt like the outside world was already judging it.

I’m not exactly sure when it started, but for a long time I was in this weird relationship with food. I needed to eat all of it. Like, every last bit that was on my plate. It didn’t matter if I was at a restaurant and there were like three portions piled up or if I was at home and my eyes were just way bigger than my stomach. If it was there, I had to eat it.

Part of me thinks it was my inner cheap ass and hater of waste saying “I’m not letting that end up in the garbage.” Another part of me says I had no willpower and wanted all of the tasty things. It was probably both.

It wasn’t until I started exercising regularly last February that I began thinking more about my relationship with food. After a few months of working out almost daily and losing very little in the pound department, I was immensely frustrated. I was eating healthy most of the time (although trying hard to sweep sugar binges under the rug) and seeing very little for it.

Do you know how annoying it is to sweat your butt off with Jillian Michaels just about every single day and have the scale stare back at you with the same unsatisfactory number week after week? Yes, I was feeling better. Yes, I was absolutely stronger and healthier. But failing to lose any weight when you’re working so hard messes with your head.