Turn It Off

There's a worrier in my brain and sometimes I want more than anything to turn it off.

The end of this summer is quickly approaching, and I almost feel like I have nothing to show for it.

Things started off rather suckily with my losing my summer assistantship and then having to embark on a job scramble at the last minute in June.  I know, I should be thankful I was even able to find a job. I really can't complain.  I was able to find a decent, non-stressful job for the summer which still allowed me time to work on other things.

However, I have been so unmotivated work wise.  I should be writing my dissertation right now.  But I've been listless.  I have been plodding along with a book review, and I guess there is that thing called a wedding I've been helping to plan as well, but I still feel like I've wasted a wealth of time.  It's a bad feeling.  Knowing you could have done so much more.

If I sat here and started listing the things that the worrier in my brain bothers me about, it would just be overwhelming.  That and unnecessary.  I really just need to take a deep breath and concern myself with today.  With things that I have control over right now.  Like finishing that book review.  Sigh.

Next week is the last week of work before my fiancé and I leave to go to the beach for several days with his family and then come back to get geared up for the fall.  I'll have the opportunity to get to know his family better and have the chance to meet people I haven't met yet.  It's going to be a nice time.  But there is this niggling sense of anxiety over it.  Like I will somehow be uncomfortably on display.  There is no reason for me to feel this way.  I honestly need to get over it because I am becoming more and more aware of how my worries can negatively impact my relationship with my fiancé, and that is the last thing I ever want to do.

I cannot express how profoundly we are connected.  When I read the sentence I just typed, it seems overblown, cliché, but I don't know how else to express it.  A young lady at church recently had a baby and we went to the hospital to visit.  We both took turns holding him and he was a simply healthy, beautiful boy.  When I saw how my fiancé held him and interacted with him I was just overwhelmed with this sense of beauty and longing.  He's going to be a good husband and father, I know it.  I want to have beautiful, healthy children with him, and I try to shut out the voices that remind me of decreasing fertility and increased risks that come with age.  (I'm older than I look.  Believe me.)

Any time we're together, all that matters is that I'm with him.  We just signed a couple of contracts with vendors and businesses for the wedding and we both expressed this feeling of accomplishment, this realization that this is actually happening.  I get excited about the simplest things with him—taking long walks to get frozen yogurt, buying new guitar strings, watching a Charlie Chaplin movie.  When he holds me close he says, "You fit perfectly.  Right here."  And it's true.  As if we were literally made for each other.  There's this indescribable genuineness that our relationship consists of that is overwhelming.  I want to preserve it, protect it, enjoy this precious thing that we have without any worries.