one year

I've been taught that marriage would be one of the most rewarding things I would be part of. I heard again and again how marriage was better than dating, how (in so many words) marriage was all positives and no negatives. My parents glow when they talk about their first year--everything from the paisley drapes they sewed for their first apartment, to my dad carrying my mom through a giant mound of snow to the threshold of their honeymoon cabin (from which, lest we forget, they now live down the street, and they do not miss an opportunity to point out said cabin with whimsical sighs and dreamy eyes).

Perhaps there are some people in this great big world who merrily waltz over the placid lakes that are their marriages, their toes rarely skimming the surface of devastating arguments and broken hearts. Perhaps their marriages are full of poems, blushed cheeks, ironed clothes, padded wallets, and assumably lots (and lots) of sex. Peace is easily obtained by some people, but for me, it is worked for and earned.

My marriage is better than fireworks and rainbows. It is fierce. It is passionate--mostly in the best ways, but sometimes in the worst. It is scrubbing the bathroom not because you love the person who helped you dirty it, but because you are the only person who will. It's letting your wife pick the movie for the eighth time in a row even though she (admittedly) has horrible cinematic taste. It's humiliating your husband in front of his family and not regretting it until it's too late. It's saying that you don't care when really you do. A lot. It's moving halfway across the country for your husband to attend his dream law school, and then missing your job, your friends, your school, and your family each day. It's those days when you lie to your mother when she asks how you're doing. It's letting your wife go on a ten-day vacation in the middle of your midterms. It's coming home to your husband from your ten-day vacation and feeling touched at how grateful he is to have you back. It's bursting into tears in the middle of ward business in sacrament meeting...for the third week in a row. It's bracing for the worst. It's fumbling to hold each other when it is the worst.

It's the shared mistake of Baja Fresh burritos.

It's whistling together on bike rides, getting songs stuck in each other's heads for days on end. It's pretending to be interested in fantasy football. It's hugging your husband from behind while he washes dishes. It's catching each other's eyes and smiling from across the room. It's finishing each other's sentences and appreciating each other's anticlimactic stories. It's hearing your wife say that she's proud of everything you're doing. It's watching a dozen giggly children climb all over your husband. It's those nights in bed with legs intertwined, noses touching, breathing steadied and synchronized, watching each other's eyes become heavy with sleep.

Most of all, it's the realization of your own imperfection--every stubborn trait, every pimple, every time you have morning breath--but it is also the realization of how perfect you are in each other's eyes.

Happy one year, Freddy. We are off to a beautiful start.

running

I used to be Type A. Before the age of ten, I had a sophisticated filing system for personal receipts. I filled my journals with inventories of different places in the home--how many tennis rackets in the hall closet, how many CDs in my case, how many bottles of nail polish on my sister's bathroom counter. I ironed my clothes before packing them in a suitcase to go on vacation. I used hair spray to slick down stray hairs in my ponytail. I always measured twice before cutting. I was always in control. Of. Everything.

No, really. In third grade, it was brought to my attention that I didn't know how to type, so what did I do but request a typewriter for my eighth birthday--a typewriter, I insisted, because it seemed intellectual, and being intellectual is everything to Type A. My biggest birthday wish was granted, and I taught myself to type on that dusty, clunky thing.

I felt so in control of myself. If I wanted to improve my grades, I did. If I wanted to pick up singing, I did. If I wanted to graduate high school early, I did. Nothing was impossible...

Well, there were some things, like that time when I could not run a sub-9 minute mile in middle school. It's not even that fast, I know I know I KNOW, and I could not understand for the life of me what the deal was. After my final class of the day, I'd go home and run around the neighborhood until dinnertime. I went to the library and researched running drills. But alas, I could not pass 9 minutes. That killed me, not because I wanted to be a fast runner, but because there was something that was seemingly impossible for me to accomplish, and the thought that I was limited NO MATTER WHAT scared me to tears at the end of each Wednesday when all us students ran around that stupid field in those stupid purple uniforms.

Some time between then and now, I lost my Type A personality. I traded it in for Type X, Y, Z, I don't even know. Let's just say that I do not file my receipts because I typically forget them at the cash register--with my wallet, phone, and purchased item. I don't know how many CDs are in my case because not only are CDs ancient (ha), but I'd be lucky if I was organized enough to keep them all in one central case. I am the frazzled mess that drives the wrong way on one-way streets and doesn't realize it until the ginormous semi barreling towards me lays its horn and shrieks to a halt. The concentration and focus, the assurance I once had about myself has faltered into obnoxious insecurity and paranoia (I claim to be fighting it).

So let's talk about why yesterday I was able to run a mile in fewer than 9 minutes, because while you'd think this event would fill me with delight and a great sense of accomplishment, it only frustrates me to think that I was able to accomplish what I so desperately wanted a decade ago with no effort compared to what I gave back then--and let's not forget that I am probably, like, 30 pounds heavier and I eat cookies for breakfast and maybe perhaps kind of sort of probably totally definitely for lunch and dinner and second dinner.

Why is that?

Why is it that I can look at my old schoolwork, and even though I have not taken a geometry class since high school, my old tests look so much easier now than they did then, even though I invested in tutors and late night study sessions in trying to understand all that junk? (...and that is why I graduated in English.)

What changes? What it all boils down to (and here comes the over analytical, symbolic world view), IS THERE NO RHYME OR REASON TO NAVIGATING THIS UNIVERSE?