change

So, things have kind of changed in the past few months. Namely, I'm married now. It was funny to log into this account and realize I needed to put my old email address with my maiden name. I have a maiden name! I was telling my grandma yesterday that I'm an old maid now, which I realize is a strange thing to tell an 86-year-old, but still, the fact remains that I'm no longer a single lady who is free to roam wherever I wish (not that I ever did that). We were talking about my cousin who wants to go to Spain this summer to teach English, and I was saying how I'd looked into that at different points in my life. But now I can't - or at least it would be much more complicated now - because I am an old, married woman.

My husband made me this fantastic drink with chocolate liqueur and his homemade hazelnut cinnamon liqueur and I've been drinking it like it was a milkshake, so forgive me if I get a bit...oh...drunken. (slight exaggeration)

Married life is funny. Mainly it's wonderful, but it's also funny. It's funny because there are so many things that are so obvious that you think you know but find you actually have never learned. Here's an example: my husband and I are two different people. Duh. That's a blunt statement of an obvious fact. But here's how it goes down in my head:

"You are so different than me! You have all these thoughts and feelings I cannot access (unless you tell me), and even if you do tell me, sometimes I just don't get it! And I will never be able to be in your head or totally understand what it's like to be you!"

Seriously, I'm stating the obvious, right? This is how 100% of relationships throughout my lifetime have been. But for some reason, once you make a lifelong commitment to a person who you love like no one else, it's weird that you still can't understand them all the time. And that doesn't even touch on the reverse of those thoughts...

"Why can't you read my mind? Don't you know that my motivation to do [such and such] was because of [said emotional need] or in response to [husband's action I didn't understand]?"

You know how people say communication, communication, communication? (no, not location, we're not talking real estate) It's so true. And I knew that going it. It makes me wonder how I ever survived in any relationship up until this point. Seriously, how crappy of a communicator am I? It's a wonder anyone wants to be my friend and all my relationships haven't fallen apart. Exaggeration, yes. Maybe it's just the gender gap that makes it necessary to be so much more clear? Probably a little bit of that, but mostly because I've never ever been in a relationship this close, and never will be again. I've never had to interact with someone in this way before. Even in relationship, I was independent. I'm not anymore.

But yet I kind of am. And that's the thing I can't even pretend to understand 1% of yet. What does it mean to be an individual...but also be part of this "we" thing? I'm not saying I didn't have myself figured out enough before or that I didn't take the time to get to know myself. I feel like I know myself relatively well (except for when I feel like I'm going insane and an alien invasion must be the only explanation), but how do I know myself within marriage? Well the simple answer is that it's only been two months, so I really don't know myself within marriage very well, and that should be okay (it's okay!). Fifty five days-or something like that-compared to the rest of my life previously. Some learning curve is expected.

I think I was inspired to write because I just started an Anne Lamott book after not reading anything of hers for ages. It's like coming home. Every other paragraph I wanted to read something aloud to my husband. She is hilarious. And profound. She makes me feel okay about myself, which is a really good thing right now because I've been feeling like a wreck lately. But we all feel like wrecks sometimes. And some day, I won't feel like a wreck anymore. The chocolate/hazelnut/cinnamon drink certainly helps.