People are always saying that you hear about death in three's...well why not something a little less depressing? Why not engagements?
One summer about three years ago (there's that magic number again), I had SEVEN friends who got married all within three (hehehe) months of eachother. SEVEN! And yet, I had been in a relationship longer than all of them. Right around that time of this first marriage wave I began feeling a tad "behind schedule"; but aside from the fact that I wasn't married, my relationship was perfectly healthy. So why then did I suddenly start panicking and pointing my finger at Dave? (Can you guess which finger?) I wasn't ready for kids yet, but maybe I was ready to start thinking about when I would eventually be ready to have kids...I began "making plans to make plans", if you know what I mean. After all, other people were done making plans to make plans...they were in the execution of aforementioned plans! And to compound the whole situation, whenever Dave and I would introduce eachother and people would inevitably bat their eyes and ask how long we've been together ("five years"..."six years"..."I-lost-track years"...), there was always the quiet, embarrassed "Oh" response.
Oh. Like I don't know what "oh" means. Oh means I should be worried, right? Oh means I should start freaking out and accusing my boyfriend of being an asshole even though he supported me when I couldn't find a job, even though he goes out of his way every single day to make me happy and encourage me in everything I want to do, even though he knows me better than most other people have ever known me.
Go oh yourselves, I should have said. I wish I had it to do over again, that me-now could go back and tell me-then to relax and stop and look around (yes, I'm aware that was a gratuitous plug for my own blog's URL) and just enjoy what was going on in my life. And what was I doing while everyone else was getting married? I was getting a Master's degree; I was changing cities; I was test-running living with my future husband; I was going on vacations; I was focusing on a new job; I was paying off my debt; I was buying a condo; I was going out and partying in an exciting new city and meeting new people and making good friends; I was climbing mountains; I was falling more in love with a guy who was changing just as much as I was.
And what was Dave doing? Dave was getting promotion after promotion after promotion; he was spending his money on stuff that made us happy the way stuff can only make people who are young and free of serious responsibilities happy; he was holding my hand, enjoying each day, and telling me he loves me every chance he got.
We were deciding what kind of people we wanted to be before deciding what kind of husband and wife we wanted to be. And then, without really trying, we turned into those people without even noticing.
I'm not saying any of this to criticize my friends who married early; I love you all, and wish you nothing but all the happiness in the world. And I'm not saying it's anybody's fault but my own for feeling like there was something missing in my life when there wasn't. I guess what I'm trying to say is that life works out differently for all of us, and the only chance anybody ever has of being genuinely happy is to stop trying to fit some predetermined mold and just do what feels right to you. I remember when my sister got engaged last year, I was really nervous about going to a family party because I knew that in spite of the fact that we should all be focusing on being absolutely estactic for Stephanie, who was going to marry the man of her dreams which is definitely cause for nothing but celebration, there would be some small-minded talk (whether it reached my ears or not) about how I should have never moved in with Dave without getting married first. I expressed this anxiety to my father over the phone, and he said something along the lines of this: "Niela, you've never done anything the way other people do it...and you've always turned out fine. Don't worry about what other people say."
So, to all the girls in the second wave, whether I know you or not, to those who didn't worry about what other people had to say or what other people were doing, who were busy making themselves happy in different ways while they waited for life to throw their loves across their way...here's to you, here's to us.
Enjoy your moment, now that you're ready for it.
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