Young Bride

Sometimes I see my friends who are younger than me getting married, and I'm jealous. Or I see my friends my age who've been married years and have kids. I'm sad. It bothers me. I start wishing I'd had that. The chance to begin that stage of my life that early. I'll wish that I'd met my boyfriend sooner and that we'd gotten married two and a half years ago, and I think how great things would be now. I plan it all out in my head, something that never can happen because that opportunity is already gone. And it makes me sad.

Then I think of all the times my life has gone exactly as I planned for it to. Which is to say, I realize that it never has. I can't know what will happen in the future, and I can't know what would have happened in the past had things been different, or even how things would be now.

I realize that I feel as though we've wasted time, as though the years we didn't spend together have somehow been wasted because we never can live them together.
But those years have made us who we are. Those years have given us the ability to be happy together, something I don't know we would have had if we'd been together sooner. The experiences we each lived in the time before we met are why we love each other the way we do now, and it would be difficult for me to say I wish I could change that. There are certainly things I regret and things that bother me from both of our pasts, but I can't say I wish that to avoid it we'd been together the whole time, that we'd married when I was eighteen or nineteen and that we had three kids by now. I want a family, but I want that when we're ready for one.

I want to marry soon, in the year I'm twenty two, which isn't as old of an age as I sometimes think it is. I don't want to wait for another five years, or anything of the sort. But I'm glad we're in the position we are today. Because if we weren't in this position, we may not have ever gotten married at all. I'm glad that I don't marry at eighteen because I wasn't the person I am today, and I'm glad that it is the person I am today who will be marrying the person my boyfriend is today.

Published

     "Today, which is Sunday, April 1, 2012, I received an email from MVNU's Penmarks, the literary journal, that read this way: 'We would like to publish your works "Incomplete," "The Confession" and "Understanding" in the 2012 edition of Penmarks. Thank you for your interest in the journal. Penamarks will be available the first week of May.'
     "I'm going to be published. I am a published author. This was my dream. It took so long to sink in that my dream came true - and it will be before my nineteenth birthday.  Something I wrote will be PUBLISHED. Do you have any idea what this means to me? I...I don't even know what to say.  When I first read the email, I screamed...a few times. Then I sat in shock for a while. I got up and danced and jumped up and down from sheer excitement. I cried. I danced some more. I returned to sitting in shock.  My emotions are in a whirl.  Is this the way all writers feel when they find out they're published for the first time? It's so hard to explain precisely how I feel in this moment. This may have been one of the best days of my life. This...this means so much to me. It gives me hope. It makes me think that maybe I'm not crazy for thinking I should spend my life writing. It makes me think that I may actually be good at it and that maybe my other dreams will come true some day - that I will publish my book and I don't know what else. Oh God. Thank you so much. I just keep telling Him that. Oh, you have no idea what this means to me...how happy it has made me feel...how excited I feel inside at times, and how numb I feel right now as I sit in utter shock writing this. I may be making a big deal out of nothing. Maybe what has happened is trivial to all others, meaningless and ordinary. But I don't care. Because to me - to me this is everything. This is what I've always wanted. My heart feels so different. I'm not sure I've ever been so happy in my entire life. My dream...one of my dreams has been realized this day. And oh how I will feel when I see it printed in ink! When I hold those papers in my hand - the magazine which will contain my words; yes, words composed by myself. How can I even begin to imagine how that will feel? One of my dreams came true tonight. It gives me hope that maybe other dreams will coem true as well. It is impossible to describe this feeling - it is one of accomplishment, of happiness, excitement, surprise and wonder. I can't describe it, but I know I want to hold on to it. This night is one I always want ot remember. I don't know how I could possibly forget. This is the night on which I learned that three things I wrote (three!) are to be published - the night I learned I was to be published for the very first time. It's not exactly something that will easily fade from memory. In fact, I'm certain that it never will."

4-2-12 12:40am

"Happy"

The things that make me happy each have their own unique way of doing so.  Although I may say that two different things make me happy, they ways they make me feel are in no way alike.  There is the same general feeling of "happiness" as we call it, but the feeling differs so greatly for each that at times I wonder why we describe so many things simply as making us "happy." Why do we define so many feelings with on word and shove so many emotions into one category just because they are positive?  They are each different and if I had a word for the way each positive feeling made me feel, it would make me...happy.