The Brownie Layer of My Life

2025: The year I laughed, lived, and gained 20 pounds of peace

As I look back on 2025, I am usually in the December crowd of “what the actual fuck was this year” but not this time. This year was the brownie layer of the ice cream cake, the best part of the whole party which is my life.

And it is because of one man. You, Rod Maldaner

I am a writer and still my mind cannot summon enough words to match what I feel. Facebook would not even let me upload half the photos I wanted. Fucking Meta.

People say the honeymoon phase fades and honestly with stress, kids, and life, it usually should. But ours just keeps getting better. Every single day. With five kids in the mix, it should have ended before it started and yet here we are, stronger, sweeter, and funnier.

I was once told by the man who “loved” me for twelve years that no one would ever want me and that I was impossible to love. He said that as I was driving to the RCMP to turn him in for domestic violence. Those words lived rent free in my head for far too long. They lingered. They hovered. They poisoned everything, especially believing anything good you said or did. My brain had been wired to think I was worthless, ugly, and unlovable unless I was being yelled at or hurt.

And then there is you.

You show me every single day that I am easy to love. You tell me you are the luckiest man alive. You yearn in a way that feels unreal. Sometimes I catch you staring at me with your baby blue eyes and I forget how to breathe. How is this my life. How is this possible when I was told no man would ever love me, remember?

You never yell at me. When shit hits the fan, you laugh, roll up your sleeves, and help clean the mess without belittling, without raising your voice, without threats, without fear, without violence.

Oh, the way you make me laugh. Real, ugly, beautiful belly laughs. I can count on one hand how many times my abuser made me laugh in twelve years. I cannot count how many times you have made me laugh because the number does not exist. Every giggle scrubs away another eggshell of anxiety I have carried for thirty two years.

I tell people you saved my life and maybe it sounds cliché but my body is the proof. I have gained twenty pounds since we started dating. I went from a size zero to a size ten. Some people would spiral over that. Not me. I admire it and you worship it with your hands, your eyes, your mouth, and your whole body.

Trauma is evil. Trauma steals. Trauma kills.

But your love, your patience, your kindness, your laughter, your honesty, your communication, your emotional intelligence, your sex, your admiration, your gratitude, and every piece of you has healed parts of me I did not know were bleeding, broken, and missing.

You took me to Paris and Spain this year. While other men are dragging their women into the deepest and darkest pits of hell, you took me to Europe and to a version of myself I did not even know could exist. You hold me tight every night. You never beg for sex. You never say anything like “I have a right to your body because you were made in my image and out of my rib.” You simply say, “Babykins, lay on me and fall asleep. I am here.”

You lay beside me as I slept for eighteen hours straight in Spain. You were not upset that we were not out exploring the cities. You watched in real time as my body reset to factory settings before the extremist cult and the abusive ex carved their damage into me. You kissed my forehead, held my hands, and kept me safe in your arms.

We experienced concerts this year that lit us up from the inside out. We devoured food that woke every sense in our bodies. We drank slurpees like teenagers and partied like it was 1980, sharing bottles and Prozac. 😜

You push the cart when we go thrifting for date nights. You open every door before my hand even reaches the handle. You hold my purse and my jacket without me needing to ask. Your jaw drops every single time you look at me, whether I spent an hour getting ready or I am in mismatched jammies with a slicked back bun.

You have been my biggest supporter when it comes to my career. While my ex beat down doors and punched holes in walls two inches from my head because he could not handle the idea of me working with men, you did the opposite. He “knew what men wanted” and he could not survive the thought of me being anything other than a locked up hostage in his house.

You keep pushing me to be the best version of myself because you see me in ways I am too trauma blind to recognize. You tell me how proud you are of me every single day. I struggle to believe it because it feels impossible that someone could mean it so honestly.

I have fallen hard. I am madly, deeply, and obsessively in love with you. In the chaos that is the modern dating world, I am the luckiest woman alive to be chosen, loved, respected, and adored by you. A man who feels like he was written by a woman.

As long as you are mine. ❤️