getting hitched

I just got engaged. He asked me on my birthday (Oct. 3), and since then I can't stop looking at my ring. Gotta check in every 5 seconds. It is one of the prettiest things I've ever been given. Warren said: 'I think you love that ring more than you love me.'

'NOOOOOO!' (furtive side glance to check in on my ring)

We've been together 10 years. Yep, in other words longer than a lot of marriages last (we win!) (just kidding!) (nah, i'm a little bit serious). I never thought in terms of a 'time line'. Perhaps because my ambitions bend towards establishing my career as an actress (i.e. - mememememe! - but in the best way possible), instead of enwombing a life and driving my Prius to Whole Foods for organic apples so i can make homemade baby food with my hand-crank baby food machine and then sit on our wrap-around porch and breast feed while observing a baby deer leaping through our wooded back-yard (i.e. my vision board. Well, a corner of it anyway. Again, i'm a little bit serious).

I recently remembered a recurring dream that I had when I was an adolescent and well into my early twenties. In this dream, i would be marrying the wrong person. These dreams would begin with me totally unsuspecting: I was SO HAPPY! Then i would be walking down the aisle and i would see the groom was someone i KNEW i didn't want to marry. I'd turn tail to run and i would awake in one of those screaming episodes that is doubly terrifying because you cannot make a sound. Your empty maw clawing at the mute night. Ever see the Oklahoma wedding ballet sequence? Sort of like that. Mind you, i've only recalled these dreams recently and i'm pleased to find that it explains a lot about the way i have talked and thought about marriage leading up to this point.

In the early days of our relationship Warren and i used to talk quite a-lot about how independent we were from each other, and how self-actualized, and how marriage was just a contract, and we didn't believe it worked, and anyway we're artists, and other really pedantic, obliviously ignorant stuff. Outwardly i would agree because i didn't want to believe in marriage. I'd seen bad marriages (my parents' being my main primer) and decided it sucked and would be best to avoid. You see a crappy marriage as an example of the institution and you think: 'hmmm... not so much'. So i characterized it as cheesey and cloying and co-dependant and destructive and weak and dorky all these things.

And then around year 8, i realized that in many ways Warren and i were already married: eight years together, four years LIVING together (which is an entirely different beast, and no easy feat). We've grown up together, spending about a third of our lives with one another. Holy shit, how did this HAPPEN?! You don't realize it when you're living it, but one day it creeps up on you and you realize... this person is an integral part of your life: He unflinchingly embarrasses himself willingly in front of you, and ENJOYS it. You assault him with rude and unfragrant body noises while watching hot vampire sex on True Blood. He behaves like an ass in front of your friends. You say things that you would NEVER dream of saying to anyone else EVER... IN YOUR LIFE. You both forget anniversaries (keep an eye on those BIRTHDAYS though. God forbid). When you get sick and have to go to the hospital because you STILL don't have health insurance, he sits with you in the emergency room for seven hours and holds you when you start crying at hour five - and laughs uncontrollably with you when the homeless dude walks out of the ER with an open jar of gherkins (?!). You both melt when the little baby girl with the big brown eyes at the table next to yours, smiles at you. He plays the straight-man to your neurotic freak fests.

And when you look at the beautiful ring he slaved to get you and instead of saying yes RIGHT AWAY like you are SUPPOSED to, you start crying that you're scared and you don't want to fuck things up and be like your parents, he looks at you unflinchingly and says

'It's just a ring'.

'Yeah. A really beautiful one.'

'You can always take it off.'

'Over my cold, dead, corpse.'

Then you both laugh because he gets it, and you get it, and you both get each other. And you both have each other. And you're so happy. And you're HOME.