Today I bought little blingy wedges for my wedding, and a pink underskirt that’s simultaneously too long and too tight in the waist arrived from Amazon today. My sister is putting the finishing touches on my dress and mailing it soon. It’s coming together.
I keep waiting to freak out about the idea of getting married. I always pictured myself as the kind of person to have massive panic attacks around marriage and the totality of it; but, I don’t know - maybe I’m past that part of my life when all major life changes cause anxiety episodes…? I mean, I’m a grown-ass woman, and I do feel good about marrying this person, and it’s not going to change my day-to-day life; it’s not like we’re also moving in together for the first time, or he’s going to be around the kids full time suddenly. We’ve lived together for nearly six years. If this ain’t married life then I don’t know what is. But even with all this said, I do recognize marriage is a whole other thing from dating. I don’t know what being married feels like, but I get glimpses of it on occasion when I look at him and think “this person is my husband”. I feel responsible for him now, like he’s a reflection of me, that we are now seen as a unit. In my mind I still hold him at arm’s length a bit - so much of him is still alien to me, as a man, as someone who grew up in LA and not the east coast, as someone not blood related to me, as someone who didn’t know me before my 40s. He’s still a bit the other, and I don’t know if that will ever change or if that’s even a bad thing. I guess the healthiest dynamic you can have as a wife and mother is to have the mom part of you and the partner part of you and then the much bigger part of you that’s just you.
Someday, all these men will leave me - I picture my life as a one bump sine wave; right now I’m in the “big” phase with all this togetherness and activity, but someday, maybe in ten years or longer, I’ll return to my natural solitary state. The boys will launch off into their lives (hopefully - unless they just live here forever, which, with housing and jobs the way they are currently, doesn’t bode well), and the F, well, most likely will die long before me. After visiting an elderly friend who never recovered from her husband’s death some ten years ago, I said to the F, “it’s funny, the best case scenario of how this ends between us is one of us watching the other die.” Other than divorce, or somehow miraculously dying at exactly the same moment, that’s “the goal” of marriage, to be together until you die. It’s an odd concept. As much as I’m glad all this happened for me later in life when I’m more emotionally mature, I’m also kind of bummed that our entire life together is just going to be watching each other deteriorate. I mean, that’s one way of looking at it - another is that I’m extremely blessed and fortunate to have found a good man to grow old with, who likes to do the same things I do and encourages me in all my efforts and loves me dearly in all my decay. I guess you get to choose your own narrative.
Sometime next week when he’s not so busy we have to sign and notarize the prenup, get a marriage license, and buy him a ring. Is that when it will feel more real? Perhaps.
I’ve decided I want to take one more stab at staying in the desert before giving up for the season - Mother’s Day weekend is open, and I thought it would be perfect timing to get some security cameras installed out there. I think we should just camp on the spot for a couple of days. The bathroom situation is a bit sketchy - but the F says he’s fine with driving over to the community center. I figure we can use our blow up beds in the sleeping area, which is clear of construction materials, and I need to get a pop up shower tent for the wedding anyway, so we can try that. We don’t even really need to cook since we’re close to food and would only be there Friday night through Sunday afternoon. So that’s on unless there’s extreme heat that weekend. I’m excited to get back out there and make some more plans for bathroom set up and heating and cooling. I have lots of ideas I’m looking to implement.
Here’s the beautiful bodice of my dress my sister constructed of two different appliqués. Can’t wait to try it on.
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