Feeling: overwhelmed
Listening to: Eric Milano - Tuesday Came
Reading/Watching: ----

I was fully intending to write a long something-or-other on the day of the actual anniversary. But my tongue (or keyboard, rather) froze solid. Nothing would happen out of it that was anywhere remotely close to how I was feeling.

Then mon coeur trumped me and wrote something short and lovely in his journal, and still, nothing from me, the alleged "senior" blogger. Having been dedicated to this pastime for five, almost six years, it is ridiculous that I can't write a damn thing about the best part of my life.

Suffice it to say, I have been giving serious thought to how my life would be, if he were not in it, if I had never met him.

I can imagine being in graduate school by now, perhaps studying and working hard and being painfully broke (ha, nothing new), and possibly paying off massive loans a nickel at a time.

I can imagine still being in San Antonio, too afraid to leave, living here with little to show for it, perhaps in a different job, feeling trapped because I would be me, just without something to look forward to, without a way out.

I can imagine being somehow magically successful, that all the things I dreamed might go as perfectly as possible, on scholarship or fellowship or internship or assistantship, soaring and brilliant and sleeping in a twin bed, learning but lonely.

I can wonder what might have happened, if I might have met someone that I thought I liked, might have gone on a date with that co-worker who flirted shamelessly, might have spent more time with this or that random boy who slipped out of orbit so easily, because my heart was no longer in the shop window, and so he moved on.

I could still be searching, desperate, or worse, giving up. I could be crushing relentlessly, still sobbing out my insides on a regular basis, still seeking any random boy to kiss, just to feel worthwhile. I could even be in another one of those relationships where the man is kinda nice, and seems to like me very much, and it's such a shame that I know this is not it. Because I may not know what love is, but I still know what it's not.

In times like these, when you are contemplating forever, contemplating always, some sick part of your brain says that it can never again be new. It can never again be a first kiss, or that anxious "what-if-he-likes-me" feeling, never again the moment of looking at someone and feeling the strong, mysterious spark without knowing why, never again the giddy, firecracker moment of realization. I only got to have one; shouldn't I be allotted more? Shouldn't I want more?

And then, behind all the what-ifs, and the might-haves, there is my boy. With those long moments of his arms and shoulders, the only plank of wood in my ocean, grasping desperately, breathing only because he is holding me up. With those rare, fragile moments where he thinks that he can't do this, he can't be that, and I look him in the eye and tell him it's no longer a him, it's no longer a me. It's an us. And the us can do anything.

There are times when I am defenseless, naked in so many ways in front of him, not sexy-airbrushed naked, but bodyhair-freckles-and-jiggly-bits naked, and something ridiculous happens, like someone farts, and suddenly we are laughing, holding and tangled and what happened was so stupid and so pointless and so private and we are laughing and feeling each other's muscles spasm against our bare skin, so vulnerable and so safe. This is the man who has broken my heart and put it back together more than anyone else. I have cried so hard because of him, and I have also held him in my arms and been so overwhelmed with peace and the absence of needing anything, that I weep quietly, gratefully, grinning and trying to huskily explain to his worried lips that no, no, I'm fine, I'm perfect.

I can imagine my life without him. But as badly as I wanted any of it, success or independence or opportunity or variety, I want my life with him more. Because I will still have all those things, in different spaces, different moments. There will still be newness, perhaps not in lovers, but in new homes and new cities and new jobs and God, maybe someday, new life.

And it's not the thrill of a wedding I'm marrying. It's not the safety of husband, or the dignity of marriage. I am not marrying the cake, or the gifts, or even the dress (although sometimes, I think that if it were legal...).

I am marrying him. Mon coeur. So aptly named, because every other endearment is given away so easily. Honey, sweetheart, baby, even love. Only one is a piece of me, something that warms, and beats, and keeps me alive. "My heart." And that is him.

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