I met my wife in 1992 and she hated me. Within a half hour of meeting her, she slapped me and left a red handprint on my face that lasted over an hour. We had too many mutual friends for us to avoid each other but she didn’t like me one bit our entire Junior year in High School. Then summer came and I got to work. I had to work hard all summer to make enough money to survive the next school year because I had moved out on my own. My Grandma was renting me a place which helped but I needed money for school, gas, insurance and a majority of my food. During that summer I learned to quit acting like I thought people expected me to act and just be myself. It was too tiring to keep up an act anyway so it dropped and I was just me and stopped caring as much about what others thought since survival was the more pressing matter. We all returned for our Senior year and I was a different person, a person my wife liked and got along with, the real me. We just celebrated 21 years of marriage and it is a testament to what happens just being yourself.