overwhelmed

I had a pretty perfect day on Friday.  

I got back on my bike, outside, for the first time in 3 weeks.  I didn't look at speed or time, just plugged in my tunes and rode to the Jefferson Memorial and back.  It was a gorgeous morning and it made me so happy to be riding again.  I came home and worked for a bit, and then we went out to lunch at Busboys & Poets with the puppy.  We spent a gorgeous afternoon at the dog park with him, and then got dressed up and went out to dinner at Sweetwater Tavern, my favorite place on earth.  After an amazing dinner, we headed to Murphy's in Old Town where we proceeded to sing our lungs out with the Irish guitar guy and drink our faces off.  A perfect birthday.  I went to sleep happy, feeling loved.

My very good friend Jamie was in town for the weekend, and we spent Saturday catching up, shopping, and generally being lazy.  He had planned to take me out to dinner on Saturday night to celebrate my birthday, so we headed down to the restaurant.  I was shocked, thrilled, and overcome to walk into a room filled with friends and family, all gathered together to celebrate my 30th birthday with me.  The poet had been secretly planning this for weeks, and I had no idea.  

We ate and drank and celebrated.  There were videos from people that couldn't be there, and a hilarious slideshow of baby Katie pictures.  Friends and family had come into town from all over the place, and it was so great to get to spend time with all of these amazing people.  This was the most perfect gift the poet could have put together for my birthday.

And then, in a room filled with all of our friends and family and so much joy, he proposed.

I'm tempted to just end that post here, and to take more time to think and process and work through everything that is in my head.  But in that moment, I was terrified.  My "fight or flee" instincts were yelling: RUN.

Since then, we've finally had the time and space to talk and work through things.  I love our life.  I love everything about it.  I'm scared that things will change, that marriage will destroy our happiness.  I've been married before, and I did everything wrong about it.  And maybe if we had taken the time to sit and talk through some of these fears before moving forward, things would have worked out differently for us.  So, for right now, we are deciding to not decide anything.  We're going to keep thinking and talking and we're going to let life go back to normal for a while, and we're going to give this decision some time and space to breathe.  The thing that is most important, to me, is that there is no reason why we have to do this, why we have to do anything, like everyone else in the world does it.  We're going to do this our own way, and decide to move forward in our own way and on our own timetable.  Our life together is filled with so much joy, and like I said on Friday, I will fiercely protect it.