I can't believe I just spent nine days in Austin. It was amazing. No schedules, no agenda... a lot of people and hippies and exploring and music. My kind of spring break. Spring Break started with a wedding, though, that was very emotional. And I didn't expect it to be. One of Shawn's good friends got married last Saturday. Throughout the wedding, I couldn't stop crying. It didn't hit me until later, when I realized that Shawn had been crying too... Of course he didn't have mascara running down his face or a kleenex in his purse, but boys are good like that I guess.
It's the end of an era. The end of college. All Shawn's friends (who are my friends too) are getting married, moving on, doing their own thing, etc. There's no more cabin, no more cookouts, no more pranks. It's weird and I didn't realize it until this week. It kind of snuck up on me. I've spent a week stewing on this post so I could explain it in terms that other people could understand.
We're getting married in two and a half months. That's insane. And I'm scared. Not about the wedding part or the living together part, no. About other things. The fact that we are about to mesh two lives together, the fact that I am about to lose my singleness and partly my individuality. I'm not saying that married people are not individuals, but losing a part of oneself to accomodate the other does come with the territory. Now let me get this straight. I would not trade anything for Shawn or the fact that I am about to spend my life with the most wonderful man ever. This is the life I chose and I would choose it again a thousand times over. I'm just saying that I don't want to lose myself. I don't want to let go of my dreams or quirks or things that make me me. I want to continue to write music, to dance barefoot, to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, to paint and draw and dream about living in Africa. I don't want to wake up twenty years from now in a big house with two cars, three kids and wonder what happened. I don't want to get married and that be it; I don't want the adventures to stop. I don't want to get caught up in the corporate American dream scheme. You can make a lot of money, but you might be wasting the best years of your life.
When we first started talking marriage, I was just focused on the fact that with Shawn, we could make a life for ourselves and get away from Nacogdoches. He would be my partner in crime. We would explore the world. Of course, my dreams are not reality, at least not right now. No one prepares you for the time period before marriage and marriage itself. No one tells you what to expect because each person is different. Sure, people can give you advice and hints, but they don't know you or the other person as intimately as you do. Think about dating. Actually, it's an awful precursor to marriage in one sense. You can date whoever you want, and when you get tired of them, you can drop them. Not so in marriage. You are married for life. Wierd, huh?
I'm glad, in part, that our engagement was so long. I was mad at first, I mean, we've been talking seriously about marriage since the Spring of 2006, but I think I needed this time for it all to sink in. I need a lot of time for things to make sense to me. Any time less than six months would have been too short, and I wouldn't have been able to sort it all out.
It's taken me a long time this semester to realize the direction my life is going. I'm frustrated in part because I haven't yet acheived the goals and dreams that I set for myself so long ago. I'm not in the place that I thought I would be in. Strangely that's okay with me. I know they will come with time and the aquisition of wisdom. But that's just it. You can't plan. Life doesn't work that way. I love the direction I'm headed and I'm content to just let it play out, and know that in time, I will acheive my dreams and strive to never lose the essence of myself.
