separate houses

moment of truth. so this is leaving a life of dependency. i find myself seeing the old me in new colors. we can be happy in separate houses of happiness. paint the walls whatever we want and still be neighbors. this is understanding. this is the purest thing i can think of. i don't know how i didn't see, don't know why i let it tie me down. i have found the answer, and i am freeing myself with it.

yet to come

There's something aggravating about change--aside from the fact that it often causes one to spin in circles and pull out hair. When a change comes, you can feel it pretty intensely. As Doris from The Owl and the Pussycat would say, "I find it enervating." Not always. Some change is good. And when it's good you want to share it with the world. When it's bad sometimes you also want to share it with the world, but with a different response.

Here's the problem: you can never own your change. It does not belong to you. You can express yourself a thousand ways and feel the change moving your world, you can let the experience influence everything around you. But it's not yours. And do you want to know why?

It's because it didn't happen to you first.

I'm getting married in 4 months and 1 week. This is exciting! Right? I mean, it's not every day that people get... oh. Right. People get married all the time. Not a big deal to most people--especially people who are jaded by bad past relationships.

Another example: I just got a credit card. In order for wedding planning to go easier, and to make it home for spring break, I applied for an Alaska Airlines card. My parents have had one for many years and after a few weeks of deliberation I filled out the form, and was approved less than 24-hours later. The desire to post it as my Facebook status was almost unbearable. "Hello entire-social-network! I have a credit card! I'm going to buy things with it and hate myself for it later!" This is not exciting. It is, because it's another step into adulthood. But I know plenty of people younger than me who have had credit cards for years, and for reasons not nearly as good as mine.

Change is also not exclusive. Yes, there is empathy. But empathy only goes so far. You know who is most excited about babies? Pregnant people, or people trying to get pregnant. The people who are most excited about new haircuts, are the people sitting in salon chairs. The people feeling most overwhelmed by doctorate programs, are the people who are about to get a "PhD" next to their name.

And people most thrilled to be planning a wedding, are the people who are about to get married, tie the knot, etc.

Yes, someday, I will stop mentioning the wedding in every blog post. I know that I'm not the first person to get married. But for now, I am excited, and while this change is not exclusive to me or exciting to everyone else I am going to take full advantage of these happy feelings.

Tuuuurn and face the change, ch-ch-changes...

How could you be so impartial

We had a blizzard last week. The entire world has probably not realized this, due to the many desserts the Earth employs and the oceans where other sorts of natural catastrophes occur, but Illinois actually has the capability of declaring a "state of disaster" after a blizzard. School was closed for 2.5 days and the campus as covered in several feet of crappy, non-packing, anti-snowman white stuff.

Now, I don't know about you, but this is a memorable thing. And I wish I could say it was memorable simply because I built a snowman that mistakenly had female body parts, and because the Saturday after I went to the Chicago Botanic Gardens and they were glorious, and because I watched a lot of movies and drank a lot of hot chocolate and took a lot of naps. However, this is not the case.

Things happen in a blizzard. Conversations, mostly, if you're trapped on-campus. And most of these conversations I will not relay to you, for privacy's sake.

But I can say that I thought a lot about marriage, and relationships, and love. Two days ago I was sitting at the computer watching the post-blizzard snow fall softly onto the already 10' high hills of plowed grossness. My heart was suddenly burdened by a whole nature of love-ly things. Friends who have perhaps chosen badly, or have chosen well but act badly. I thought about my relationship with Joseph and the impending date of our wedding.

I had an epiphany in the snow-sighted moment: 4 1/2 months is not a long time. That's how long I have left of my unmarried life. In the brought spectrum of my existence, whether it be just these 22.5 years or if I live to be 80, 4 1/2 months is a tiny speck in which to fulfill any so-called "last requests" and to get all my prideful independence (as opposed to the normal independence) out of my system.

I'm not married yet. So I don't have some universal wisdom for you. I haven't yet experienced any marital adventures. But I know what love is, and what it's supposed to look like, and what it's not supposed to look like.

So here is my plea:
If you love each other, make it unbending love. Don't let it swerve in the face of conflict or misunderstanding.
If you love other, speak to each other. Don't say just what you want to say, but what the other person needs to hear. Be unselfish with your words, don't hold back just because you don't want the other person to "feel bad."
If you love each other, hold each other up in a moment of weakness, even if it's emotional weakness or a lifelong struggle that won't cease just because of your love. Comfort the other even if it seems ineffective.
If you love each other, take care of each other. Not because you will be taken care of in return but because your own contentment relies on the other person's well-being.
If you love each other, be willing to sacrifice anything and everything.
I did not say "sacrifice anything and everything."
Be willing.
Not willful.
WILLING.

crystal white winters that melt into spring

I've been counting down the days with faithful devotion, watching November become December and each week pass me by with even more fleeting madness than the last. I have always been enraptured by time and how I can watch it go quickly or feel it trickle away like something slow and sticky that has been spilled unnoticed.

Six days, 21 hours and 52 minutes from now someone very special will be waiting in the baggage claim at the SeaTac airport. He will see me coming down the escalator and we won't be able to stop smiling once our eyes meet. I'll drop my giant backpack, and he'll pick me up and spin me around. We'll kiss. The year will progress, and finish, and turn into the new year, and I will be one month closer to marrying my best friend.

I cannot wait to go home.

what the heart wants

16 days until Thanksgiving break. 36 days until I head home for Christmas. 46 days till Christmas actually happens. 228 days until I get married.

Time has always confused me. I've always had an older voice in my head, speaking from the future like a saint or some strange progressive conscience. I've never been able to live in the moment. I keep pushing forward, wanting to get there as fast as I can so that I can start waiting for something else and count down the days for something better, more exciting.

And like the future pulls me into motion one way, the past pulls me in the other direction.

I knew this day was coming. See... sometimes you find these "perfect" people and you get wrapped up in them and think you can share in their happiness, maybe even be their happiness. Then the inevitable happens and you have to let them go and then... then what? Then what do we all do, looking back at those shadows and ghosts, holding shaking hands over healing wounds or ugly scars, turning our heads this way and that just to get a glimpse of what their lives are like without us.

We get jealous. I get jealous.

I am the happiest person on earth. I am deeply in love with and deeply loved by a wonderful man. I am pushing myself more than I ever have, I am working hard, I am busy, I have good friends and a good family, I have a bright and promising future just waiting around the corner. My health is currently at its worst, but that's another story. So what exactly am I jealous of? What am I looking for?

I will never know. But I knew this day would come. I knew that this person would find their spark, their piece of happiness, and I knew that when I witnessed it and saw it and understood the fullness of it I would lash out like the angry animal my heart often seems to be and I would get jealous of a happiness that--in all honesty--probably couldn't hold a candle to mine.

My happiness is not in a giant rock on my finger, or years of working with prestigious people, or wealthy parents and uninhibited vacations, or being a "hipster", or experiencing fame, or being protected from any painful or eye-opening circumstances.

I knew this day would come. And I don't know why it bothers me so much, but it does. And I just want to say this here, for the world to see, that I love my life, and I love the person (and the people) in my life, but I will also admit that one of the only things holding me up right now is that I found happiness first.

That's right. I said it. I found it first.

(congrats on catching up!)

a decade

I don't have a lot to say tonight. It's a few minutes until Halloween/Reformation Day. I just got done going to 2 parties. I am still dresses as a poison fairy, although I took my wings off. I have a lot to do tomorrow.

But for right now, for another few minutes, it's still October 30th, and ten years ago today my grandfather George Albert Foutz passed away.

I am not going to describe the night to you. I won't elaborate on the tremor in my rib cage that climbed out of my throat and launched into someone else's chest with sobs and screams. I won't talk about the funeral or how I talked to him for months afterward.

Just know that he was a beloved man. He had a handlebar mustache. He loved dachshunds, banana peppers, making sandwiches with leftover pancakes, and had the best cinnamon roll recipe. He was deeply in love with his wife Virginia, and they were married for over 50 years. He took care of her until the day he died.

It's hard to honor someone with just a blog. So I won't try too hard. He's honored in my heart, and with my life.

I love you, Grandpa.
-your Katiedid

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.