Thursday, August 16, 2012

Husband and Wife

Dear Diary,

Wow, the wedding is over. I can't believe it. What an adventure that was. What a stressful and exciting and crazy adventure. I'm not sure if I feel any different. The engagement and the move, now those were life changers, but marriage. I mean, my insurance will be better and K will get a tax break and I have a million pretty pictures and I mean of course, yes I get to spend the rest of my life with someone I love, but I was planning on doing that anyway so what's changed? I suppose I am using the word husband quite frequently. I say it at the supermarket to the butcher, "I'm not sure my husband will like the chicken, do you have any steak?" I say it when friends ask for plans, "Let me ask my husband to see what he's up to." And people seem to say it to me all the time, "Get home to your husband" or "how's your husband?"

I feel awful saying this, even to you diary, but the day after the wedding, I cried. Hard and long, like huge sobs of relief and mourning and exhaustion. I was not depressed, I was tired and I think I was slightly in mourning. Not because getting married is like a kind of death, in fact marriage is more like a birth; a new relationship, a new adventure. But it is also an end to a different adventure. And I think that I was crying for that adventure. It was fabulous, my 35 years of marking the box single. I learned so many things and I had so much fun. Perhaps that's what marriage is. It's taking all those things I learned and all those things I should have known better and mixing them with all K's education and mistakes (did he make any of those?), adding all our old jokes and a brand spanking new joke book, stirring in extra vulnerability and a heaping of I've got your 6, adding a whole new set of people I can call family and who will be there for me in an instant. Yes, that's what it is. It's family. I'm making a new family and that kind of makes me cry with happiness because that's pretty special.

Last night I was in San Francisco with A, and I stayed out quite late. The drive home was just a bit more harrowing that I anticipated and I was a lot more tired. K stayed on the phone with me the entire drive. He just laid in bed, put me on speaker and chatted. He told me stories, he gossiped and he drove me all the way home.

I suppose things are different now. I mean I am still a bad ass and I will still be me, but I'm now me plus one.




4 comments:

  1. That made me cry just a little!

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  2. I'm planning a wedding that will be in a little less than 2 months, and I imagine that once the stress and countless hours spent planning it is totally behind me, I will probably react much like you did. You write beautifully. Thank you for sharing it.

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  3. Awesome blog post! I am so happy for the two of you and excited for your future. And, I am glad you are back to writing! xo

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