The word that I believed would reflect the past year most was change. Not really. Everything changed, and yet nothing did. The expectation of change was so much bigger than me, and when everything happened, and everything was done, it was weird to look around and see that really, in the end...nothing was different. Nothing, except a piece of paper filed with the Sturbridge, MA clerk's office...and my last name.
No. The word that most adequately describes my year 2010 is waiting.
Waiting. I spent most of 2010 waiting. Sitting in my room, looking over websites and pictures of weddings, planning our own, thinking about how I would look, how the food would taste, how the music would sound...never believing for an instant that, even two hours after it was all over, I would be hard-pressed to remember the way "Canon in D" sounded as I walked down the aisle, or the taste of the cake we'd chosen so carefully, or really, anything except the look on David's face when I saw him for the first time at the front of the church, trying so, so hard not to break down in tears.
Last New Year's Eve, I thought that 2010 would be magical, and it was. But it was over in a heartbeat, in the bat of a butterfly's wing. At the end of the day, David was right, when I tried to wake him up at midnight on Dec. 31, 2009, to ring in what would be our wedding year.
It's just one year.
One year, in a life (hopefully) full of them. Since 2008, since David and I came to an understanding that we would marry, months before he actually proposed, I have been lying in wait for 2010. The year that I would become his wife. And now that year has come and gone. And there is a lifetime ahead of us.
And who is to say that 2011, a year I've hardly thought about for a second, should not be even greater than 2010?
In truth, our futures have never been brighter. David starts school in seven days. Seven days until the course that will finally open the door for his career begins, and everything will change for him then. His entire demeanor has changed since he got that acceptance letter. Maybe it's only in my head, as his oh-so-proud newly-wedded wife, but his shoulders seem straighter, his eyes brighter, his manner lively. I look at his proud, excited face and realize how lucky I am, that this man of mine has the spark of ambition at last, and he is finally excited and ready to become something amazing. Yes, I am probably more proud even than he is.
And me?
I saw the film "Tangled" a few weeks ago. I really liked it. The opening song, by Mandy Moore, really reflects how I have felt about my life this past year. It is called "When Will My Life Begin?", and it's incredibly accurate, until the last stanza at least. I've been waiting. Waiting for something incredible to happen, placidly sitting and imagining and not doing much of anything.
This year, it's time for that to end. It's time for my life to really begin.
I'm setting goals. New things, new experiences, new pursuits. I've joined a book club online and I'm attempting to read 100 books (most of them new, with any luck) by the end of 2011. I'm meeting new people online, and stretching myself socially, since I've always been too shy to go out and meet new friends. I'm going to take a class in spinning my own yarn, and try something new. Even if I hate it, well, I will have tried!
Most of all, I'm going to go back to school and finish my History B.A. I am going to finish. I am so close, so close I can taste it, and I'm going to complete it. So I can finally be proud of myself for completing something. I'm going to figure out what I want to do with my life. History? Journalism? Something totally different? Yes. It is time. I'm twenty-seven and it is time to figure out what I want to do with myself.
And finally, hopefully, I pray in the deepest recesses of my heart...I will, this year, become a mother, and make David a father. It is the hope dearest to me, and the one thing I want above all in this next year. He has promised that we will start trying around summer, and I can wait that long. It's not as if I don't have enough going on to distract me until then, and it's only six months off, after all!
I'm through waiting for my life to start. I'm going out, I'm going to achieve what I set out to do. It's time to start making things happen.
I can't wait to see what happens in 2011.
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