You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘happiness’ tag.
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about partnership and marriage, and especially about being married to The Fella, which is, y’know, awesome.
This Ask Metafilter comment gets to the heart of that awesomeness:
You know when you were a kid, and you’d get excited about sleepovers because you could stay up all night watching movies and talking to someone who just cracked you up and really understood you? Remember how special those nights felt?
Every day is like that now. Except we get to have really good sex, too.
Yup, that sums it up: I get to spend every day and every night with my very favorite person from now on, and we get to express that favorite-ness in every way we wish.
But I still haven’t really internalized that this is a two-way street of Awesome — that my very favorite person’s very favorite person is me.
Let me digress.
I had a rotten morning. You don’t need to know the details, but I made a small error that caused the not-sane part of my brain to castigate me and call me names (which A. is not productive and B. is NOT ALLOWED) while I flailed around trying to get dressed and out of the house in a hurry.
During this ridiculous few minutes of blistering self-loathing, The Fella kept interjecting helpful comments like, “You’re not stupid, you just made a mistake” and “How can I help?” and “Are these your pants?” When he should have been sleeping peacefully (and could very rightfully have been giving me grief over my meltdown), he was cheerfully pitching in to soothe me, to help me, to solve my problem.
And later in the day, I added some of those things together. I did the emotional math: I am married to my very favorite person, the person whose opinion I value more than anyone else’s, the person who I think is the downright AWESOMEST person in the whole wide world.
And he thinks I’m THE AWESOMEST, too.
I think he must be right. You don’t argue with the transitive property.
All week long, I’ve been having what sound like classic anxiety dreams, what should be classic anxiety dreams, but Dream Elsa keeps stepping up and mastering the anxious situations.
- A dream replays a real-life conversation in which a loved one asks me to do something I feel awkward about doing. In the dream as in life, I tactfully and pleasantly say no, re-establishing my boundaries; in the dream as in life, the loved one graciously accepts my refusal and we chat about other things before saying “I love you, bye.”
- I find myself at a party where I know absolutely no one. Instead of freezing up or standing in a corner, I pour myself some punch and smilingly make my way around the room meeting people.
- I awaken in an unfamiliar and busy bank lobby without pants. “Huh,” I say to the tellers, “my pants have disappeared, along with my wallet. I’ll have to get new ones! See you later.”
- The bank building shifts, as dream landscapes tend to do, and becomes a shopping mall bustling with shoppers. Unsurprisingly, all of them are fully dressed; I am still trouserless. “Well,” I think, it won’t be the oddest thing they’ll see today. Hmm, I bet I can buy some pants in one of these stores!”
- I’m out with The Fella in a busy bar when I’m temporarily struck dumb. He looks at me quizzically; I calmly gesture to my mouth and shrug, smiling to reassure him. He understands completely, flashes me a loving look, and without words we fist-bump, clinking our wedding rings in solidarity.
I’m not sure what these mean, but I wake up each day nodding in appreciation of this Dream Me who sizes up each situation and faces it with calm confidence and competence. I half-expect to dream of showing up, naked and unprepared, at a final exam — and to get an A+.
At not-quite-the-end of a long week of work and deadlines, The Fella came home from work around midnight and sat down with a blank look on his face, getting ready to write the weekly newsletter.
“You look a little beat, hon,” I said. “Did you have dinner?”
“Not really.”
It took me all of three minutes to whip up something simple for him to eat. As I gave him the plate and a beer, The Fella took my hand and quietly, earnestly said, “Thank you. Thank you for marrying me.”
Today is our second anniversary, and The Fella’s hatched some secret plans. (Nothing big, he assures me. Just secret.) The first item on the agenda: he got me an enormous coffee. Number two on the agenda: he’s doing laundry.
This guy gets me.
* [The Fella, don't hover over the links!] update Now that I’ve given The Fella his gift, I can describe it here. We’re going to have a mid-year variation on our Valentine’s day tradition of staying in with cheesy horror movies and pizza.
For the cotton anniversary, I gave The Fella the abominable-looking Lady Frankenstein, starring Joseph Cotten. Yeah.
Because it’s too hot to heat the oven, I’ll be picking up fantastic take-out pizza from Otto.
Wait for it… cotton.
I toyed with plenty of other gift ideas. For example, I thought about getting a really luxurious set of sheets, which we kinda need. Or towels, ditto. But I dismissed those as gifts for me, not for The Fella.
What did The Fella give me? A really luxurious set of sheets. And a really luxurious towel. Did I mention: this guy gets me.
This morning, Maggie of Mighty Girl transcribed a harmless-seeming (or harmless, depending on your mindset) chat between friends, spurred by a typo: widow for window.
In the comments there, I responded to her joke, a response that was half thoughtful and half visceral. Since a handful of people have clicked over to Macbebekin by way of that comment, I felt it was worth addressing here as well.
As a sort-of-widow myself*, with a sister recently widowed, and many friends and loved ones who have seen their partners die, I felt gutted by that joke, by the ease with which it consigns widows to a pile of anachronistic things.
That is not to say that Maggie shouldn’t have made the joke, or shared it.
Elli
Elsa
