Growth & Changes

I've been silent for a while.

Lots of internal and external changes that I wanted to sit quietly and feel. Sometimes it feels like ice melting. Sometimes it feels like a kaleidoscope shift of ice patterns. Either way, I believe beauty has grown in me, and it's a little startling.

The thaw began with graduating from school after 30 years. Then falling in love. Then opening myself to faith (of sorts). Then entering into an engagement. All life changing events. All in the last 6 months.

This thing, this pairing, this delicate seed of happiness and a future together has been a quiet miracle that unfolds a little more every day. I've hesitated to tell people. Part of that is knowing that what it means to me will be lost in the translation, and in that crack can enter all kinds of assumptions and judgments that I don't yet want to hear.

Part of that is having time to deal with my own overwhelming fears regarding marriage -- what commitments mean and whether I am actually capable of intimacy over the long haul, regardless of the fact that it's always been what I've wanted. Wanting and ability are two very different things. I've got a lot of baggage about marriage from my own family, from what our society tells us the confines of that designation are, etc.

While much of these fears have grown quieter over the last few weeks, the one that's still roaring in my ears is resistance to the hierarchy of love. What I don't like about marriage is the sense that this relationship suddenly has primacy above all others. That assumption justifies the atomic family's isolation in a suburban home. This is not what I want. It's one reason why I'm adamant about keeping my current living arrangement of sharing a house with a dear friend, living close to my sister, spending multiple evenings with other friends.

Even so, I feel the bond between Eric & I solidifying, stabilizing ... which really just means that I'm coming to trust its reality, its permanency, its gravity. Maybe at some point, I will come to terms with a relationship of 2+ in every situation. Maybe there's safety there, maybe love, maybe even freedom. I don't know. At the moment, I'm still holding out for other possibilities.

Thankfully, there are months and months before a ceremony making this connection even more real. By the time laws are involved, I hope my uneasiness has been resolved in me. Until then, I grow, and the seed continues to sprout.