The 15 th anniversary - how to go on?

A random photo of a rainbow...
Fifteen years ago I got married. It was a natural step in our relationship which had started exactly one year earlier. Love, marriage, children and "til death do us part". It was so obvious.

We were so much in love that we could not stand a day without each other. We were inseparable. After years of being a very indepedent extravert I met and married an introvert and I loved it.😅 We felt we had so much in common, especially regarding childhood experience, toxic parents etc. We shared our dreams. Oh, yeah, we felt like floating over the rainbow and chasing unicorns.

Now, well, 15 years have passed and we have two awsome teenagers at home. So many things have happened, good and bad. Just life. My illness, though, seven years ago turned out to be some threshold. I suffered from septic shock, had a massive surgery and nearly died. When I left hospital after 3 months I was glad to be alive but I knew I would never be healthy again. Something inside me changed. I realised life was too short to waste it.
As a patient of ICU I experienced dying at least twice. Apparently it was not my time yet, however. I know what it is like to die. Since I am alive, though, I want to live a happy life. There are so many dreams I want to come true.
And it seems that my husband does not share these dreams any longer. Have we grown apart? Why? And how to restore what has been sort of torn?

We love each other, we love our children. But still... There is a gap that has appeared through the years. We have turned out to have a totally different sense of humour, dramatically different political views and a bit opposite visions of the future. His political opinions drive me mad. How has he become so outrageously alt-right? Why does he say he is a libertarian? Why does he admire these politicians whom I detest? Why, why, why...🤦‍♀️

We both used to laugh when we heard a joke about a married couple who were celebrate their anniversary and the wife asked her husband: "Are we going to kill a pig for our anniversary?" and the husband replied: "Why am I to kill a pig? The poor animal is not guilty that I made such a stupid mistake years ago!" 😂
Do we still laugh at it? Uhmmmm, I need to check.
Well, he has brought me these beautiful red roses today.( And a pot with lavender - to fight mosquitos. How romantic and practical at the same time. Always.)

Perhaps living in a marriage is like this carousel in our beloved Paris where we were 3 years ago. One minute (week, month, year, whatever) we are up high, happy, delighted, excited and overwhelmed with beautiful, amazing perspectives and next minute (etc.) we are down... Down but hoping to get high again. Life.