For the Entire Rest of My Life

Hello, last semester of school for the entire rest of my life.

So hard to believe.  But the train has left the station, so I gotta jump on, buckle down, saddle up, do all those things that deal with bootstraps, buckles and all other securative and reinforceative accoutrements and get. it. done.  Dissertations do not spontaneously write themselves.

For the entire rest of my life.  Two things: no more school after this semester, and being married to my husband.  What does forever mean?  When you pledge to spend the rest of your waking days to another human being, what does that even mean?  It's this weird, unfathomable, slightly spooky thing.  This dude.  Glasses-wearing (not in our wedding photos, tho), freckled guy.  Forever.  Forever seems so deep.  It seems so eternal.  So fatalistic.  Signed in blood, serious and binding, to the death.  But paradoxically, what forever looks like day to day is pretty ordinary.  Waking up before he does and watching him as he's still asleep.  Walking to the bus stop together in the morning.  Buying almond milk and wheat thins from Kroger.  Watching The Office on Netflix in our jammies and laughing so hard.  Day to day, forever is mundane.  Simple.  Graspable.  Forever is a warm, crocheted blanket you wrap yourself up in while you sip some pear and green tea.

I never wanted a "there all along" love story.  One where he was someone I grew up with, knew all my life, was as familiar to me as my own brothers, but one day, I began to see him in a different light.  No.  I wanted a new and different person.  I wanted the intrigue of the unfamiliar.  P and I are two different people from two different worlds.  But somehow we work.  There's something holy about the process of taking a chance on someone and loving them.