I feel like I could describe my life in two separate ways at the moment: mostly the same as before and then completely and totally different.  Nothing has really changed, per se, except that I now spend the majority of my free time with this beautiful, amazing girl – but everything else?  My job, being in school, my pain in the butt slash super cute puppy, where I am living.  The weather is a little nicer, sunny spring days – but in the day to dayness of it all?  Kind of the same.

And yet.  Everything, every single thing around me seems to have shifted.   I know it is not everything else but me, my perspective on life, my own and everyone else’s and my ability to see things from a veil of happiness as opposed to one of loneliness or sadness or anxiety.

It’s not that my life before all of this was terrible.  Not at all, actually I had gotten to a point where I was happy with where I was and where I was headed.  Still waded through some tough periods but overall, I feel like I had finally pulled myself to a sustainable space.

But now….now it’s a different level.  A level of happiness and peace and clarity that I don’t think I knew existed.  Finally, every single step that has brought me to this place makes sense, maybe not as an individual moment but as a part of the collective events that guided me towards right now.  Towards the beginning of everything.

I think before, as all of my friends got engaged, married or pregnant, I found myself (while immensely happy for them) feeling a little lost, because not only was I not doing those things, I wasn’t even with anyone who I could picture doing those things with.  On the cusp of 25, I realize it’s not abnormal to not be married or pregnant but I’m not someone who ever pictured myself hitting 30 and still without a family or the idea of a family in the near future.  I know who I am – and I know I have always wanted that incredible, unconditional, forever kind of love that would bring a whole new meaning to every single day.  The kind of love that wraps your life in a bubble and while not able to protect you from all bad things, able to cushion the rough edges and the falls.  I know I have always wanted a partner, in every sense of the word, to walk next to me through life, to share my goals and dreams with and to share in her own as well.  To be the other’s greatest fan, biggest advocate – to never stop believing that whatever shit hits our lives, what exists between us is more powerful.  Powerful in life’s weakest, most vulnerable, soul-crushing moments.

I thought maybe I was naive to think that kind of love existed for real.  Or that it would exist for me.

I thought I knew what it meant to be happy.  To feel loved and understood and protected.

I thought I had felt infinite connection with another human being.

I thought I would always have to worry about the future and how my life would turn out.

It turns out, I was pretty wrong.

Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence. -milan kundera