Life Approaching

life is hectic when your 21, taking 15 hours of school, working a coffee bar, oh and planning your wedding. Sometimes, a lot of times, it's a lot to handle. I lay awake some nights thinking, "how is this ever going to work?" Andrew is everything to me, absolutely everything. What I feel for him stretches far beyond anything i've ever felt before. He calms me down when I get crazy and he understands me in a different way. But oh isn't that so true...don't we all aspire to be

Engagement

understood? But there are some of us who rather always be a mystery; the allure of never being understood. I get that. I'm part of that. Half the time I don't fully understand myself, I just am. It's hard to explain it. A guy who once told me he loved me, knowing I didn't return the feeling, would constantly tell me how he didn't understand me. "What do you want me to say?!" I'd reply. "You don't understand me because it's not right.The only way you'd ever understand me is if I lied the words 'I love you too'." He wanted to analyze me and open my every thought. I wasn't exactly in agreeance. What I learned of love is that you have to be willing. You have to want to share yourself, you have to want to smile, be silly, talk...if you don't, if there's a block there, it may not be right. Nerves, are okay. Butterflies are okay. But fear, shaky, keep-you-up-all-night-fighting fear, c'est mal. All risks are scary but the right one won't hurt. Make sense? I hope so.

The biggest deterrence, I think, to happiness and stability is stress. We carry it everywhere; in our eyes, our feet, our shoulders, and as yogists believe, our hips (mainly women carry it there). So, it is because of this issue, that I've decided to take up yoga again. I used to do it fairly frequently years ago and then when i moved, yoga and i grew a part. Well now i've come crawling back, begging for forgiveness, and yoga said, "sure i'll take you back, but i won't make it easy." Oh how true yoga! Waking up at 5:30am during the week, 7am on a Saturday morning (this one too), and putting my upper body strenght to the test. Why in the hell would i put myself through it? Well, it calms me down, plain and simple. The posing movements, the meditation, it takes me away from school, dedlines, bills, plans, problems...even if it's only an hour, it's my hour and i'm happy with that.

In addition, I've decided i need to get my financial life together. I'm getting married in one year and i'm not exactly what you would call 'financially savey'. I do believe it all started in the first grade, when i took out more books than i could read from the public library and never returned them. I've been on the run ever since, library to library, collecting victims, opening new cards. But that's just like money isn't it? Buy more than you need, can't pay it off, get a new card, max it out too, and keep running til you've lost all your options. Although i haven't maxed out any credit cards yet, i have been wanted by several movie rental stores, and a cellphone company. I've decided, or learned perhaps, that most college students are not ready for when life happens. By life I mean, you meet that person that you can't live without, you want to get married, and if you're lucky enough to have your parents aid for the wedding,

Enaged by the water

what do you do afterwards? Andrew and I know we don't want to through our money away into an appartment, we want a place that is all our own, even if it's small. We want an old house, with wide wooden floors, all aged and scratched. We want a few acres so we can have chickens (even if we are in the city). We want walls we can paint, rooms to fill with the sound of his guitar and my typewriter. A place to truely inhabit; to live and thrive inside. We all have our own ideal first-home-paradise, but most young people may be far from achieving it. Money for the movies, money for spring break, money for rent and textbooks, food and laundry, gas and car repairs, overdrafts and concerts. Life is gleaming when you're in college. But what do you do when you find life approaching, graduation right ahead, and no job lined up yet?

I don't know. That's why we're saving, or trying to. We don't want to be slaves to money. We don't need to be filthy rich, we just want to be comfortable. To be able to go on a weekend vacation without fear of the bill. There's a lot of work in our future, but we're willing.

Okay, i've been procrastinating too much. I've really got to start research for my speech. Wedding plans next time maybe?

xoxo
Rai