Reinventing.

It's funny how soon things can start to feel normal, or at least the alternatives to feel weird. I like routine - sometimes I wish I didn't, at least not so much - but I can't really get away from it. It's been good to finally have one after these last few months of non-spontaneous unpredictability (if that even makes any sense). It's so good to wake up and go to work, knowing that I'll see Kevin in a few hours for lunch at the Union, and that at right about 5 he'll call me once he's off work and come over. The evenings - well - I just let them take care of themselves. There's no rush to do anything because we have all year to do it, which is such a different feeling than this whole last year where I felt like it had to be so go-go-go in order to accomplish everything we wanted to within the designated monthly weekend.

It's kind of neat, to be falling in love all over again with the same person, but in a different way. In the "I-can't-wait-to-wake-up-next-to-you-again-tomorrow" kind of way, rather than the "I'm-going-to-miss-you-so-much-when-we're-not-together" kind of way.

Being long-distance for so long has taught me how to not take anything for granted. Having lunch together on a random weekday doesn't seem like a big deal until I realize we never got to do it before. I just feel so blessed to be able to do all the little things together. It's beautiful, really.

1.25 years later and I still feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

Eurekas.

I've had a lot of moments lately where I stop and think about a part of my life and say to myself, "It's too good to be true." The awful reality of it is, we all have so many things in our lives that have happened and hardened us so that once a good thing finally does happen, we're almost forced by some weird law of nautre to question it.

Needless to say, I hate this reality. I wish I could be one of those people that just appreciates things for how they are in the moment, doesn't overanalyze, and deals with the [potential] consequences of that later. But I'm just not that girl. And so, when good things happen to me, I'll wonder why. Overall, I consider myself to be incredibly blessed, but I never have that kind of immediate reaction where I think, "Gosh I'm lucky." Naturally, when bad things happen to other people, I start questioning all the existing good parts of my life, wondering when they, too, will crumble before my very eyes.

But maybe it doesn't have to be like that. Maybe a more accurate way to say it is that I'm learning that it truly doesn't have to be like that. I've never been one of those intrinsically happy kinds of people - I guess introspection and overanalyzing have their downfalls - but I'm trying and learning how to take happiness at face value.

A small part of me has always succumed to all the stigmas out there about getting married young - that you can't possibly know what you want yet, that you aren't established enough in your career to settle down, that you're too immature, and the list goes on forever. Maybe I've only bought into them because it's easier than admitting I'm scared. But really, fear is just part of the whole formula, because when I think about all the times in my life I've been really, genuinely happy, I was always afraid of [fill in the blank] leading up to that happiness.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, maybe believing in your "happily ever after" doesn't also have to mean that you're naive. Maybe it can mean just that - that life brought you something so good that you can't help but celebrate in it forever.