Five Years a Loser

Five years ago today I stood in the drizzling rain at the edge of Capitol Lake in Olympia, Washington and a young man got down on his knee to ask if I would marry him. I didn't say yes. I cocked my head and said, "Yeeaaah..." because hard consonants were hard. I mean difficult. They were difficult. 

In retrospect I feel that a more confident answer would have been unlike me. It was this moment I knew was coming but nothing really prepares you for when you're finally in it. Yes, I wanted to marry him. We'd known we wanted to get married almost from the very beginning of our relationship. Still, when that time comes and you have to actually face the thing you have been wanting, the decision seems much more overwhelming and incomprehensible than it did when you were just dreaming about it. 

And in that moment, regardless of how confident my answer was, I forged my loser-ness with his loser-ness. We were losers together, even before the wedding. Before the vows and the rings and then the road trip cross-country and the fights and confusion and the years of wedded insanity... we were first losers together when I said, "Yeaaah..." Because for the first time, we had this tangible thing that was ours. A relationship is between two people but it is much more fluid and unpredictable than an engagement. An engagement is definitively us, it has a goal for us made by us which will be carried out by no one but us. 

On that day, we lost our selves--because a marriage begins long before the vows. A marriage begins when two people agree to get married and consequently agree that every decision from here until eternity is made by both, not one. 

Sure, I decide when I want to write a blog and he decides when he wants to buy coffee and we all decide when we're going to use the bathroom or make phone calls or cuddle with the dog. But we become aware that all things, even those small things, affect the other person and we begin to take that into account. This is the mindset that begins before marriage: you lose your self to accomodate the us that has just been made. So if I want to write a blog but I need to fold laundry, I do the laundry first. If he wants to buy coffee but it will make me late for work he skips out on the latte. We sacrifice and lose out on things we want for ourselves in order to benefit us as a whole. 

And in all the world there is no one I am more thankful for, more blessed by, more willing to be a loser with. 

I love you, Joseph. You make us such incredible losers. 

shiny and new

Happy 2010! I can honestly say this has been the best *start* to a new year in quite a long time. I've spent plenty of New Years' Eves sitting at home with my parents watching fireworks on the local news and sipping sparkling cider. I've spent a few of them at youth group "all nighters" and last year I went to a friend's house and we played music all night. This year... I got tipsy, played some card games, and at the end of the night my then boyfriend and I shared a cigar.

But the way I'm really going to remember bringing this new decade is defined by what happened yesterday. It was our 6th month anniversary, so we went into Olympia. We drank coffee and walked around a folk art store. I used a really disgusting toilet. We played in the Heritage Park Fountain, which is really beautiful for the record, and walked all up and down the docks in the dark. I took eight million pictures. (ok, only 158.) And when we got back to the lake, after avoiding lots of puddles and people with dogs, we went to this little part of the concrete that goes into the lake--I suppose it was kind of like a balcony--and he started talking. And he said some pretty nice things. I mean, really nice things. And I didn't want to let go of his hands, partially because of the cold, but also because I knew what was coming and I needed something to hold on to.

Eventually, though, he pulled away. And with this nervous smirk on his face Joseph got down on one knee and pulled out a little white box with a ring in it, and asked me to marry him. I said yes, naturally. Actually, I kind of cocked my said and smiled and said, "Yeah..."

You all know the story from there. It's the story of a thousand proposals and a thousand engagements. A ring gets put on a finger and there's an embrace to follow that may or may not be the best hug/kiss that couple has ever experienced. It's the story of losing yourself completely and being found completely in the very same breath, two conflicting sensations in the exact same moment. And everybody hopes, and hopes beyond hope, that those two people in love will get to keep what they've found. I know I do.