catalysts

Eight months, the scheme unforeseen, the distance too distant to seem significant. Then a break in the proximity. Growing further and further away, the earth spreads out its great arms between two hearts and there is a catalyst.

It couldn't wait anymore.

When Joseph and I first got engaged, we planned on waiting to get married until after I finished my degree. This was the plan up until August 24. I got back to school in Illinois, and we realized how far apart we were (yet again) and there was such a dangerous clarity to everything. We did not want to wait another 2 years to get married. Waiting that long seems so endurable when the one you love is at your side, physical and real and present. Everything changes when you're separated by 75% of a country.

Multiple phone calls, endless nights of prayer, a trip to my parents' house (made by Joey), and 2 trips to the financial aid office (made by me) later.... we have officially changed the date to June 25th of THIS coming year.

This means so many things. It means, first of all, I get a head start on this lovely thing called the rest of my life with the love of my life. It means living in a studio apartment and paying bills and washing dishes in a tiny kitchen and throwing parties in the same room as my bed. It means buying groceries and toilet paper. It means coming home to the same wonderful man every day, knowing I don't have to say goodbye to him before I go to bed.

It means having 50% LESS debt for my senior year.
It means having 14 months LESS to plan my wedding than originally planned.
It means having LESS motivation to do anything remotely responsible. (don't worry, I'll still do it.)
It means not having to wait to be with the man I love.
It means not having to sleep on a floor with 18 other people and share a shower with those people and a tv and regulate my noise level and go to meetings with them blah blah blah.

What this means is that I am losing everything I don't need and finding everything that I most deeply desire.