The wind is picking up; the weather becoming more tumultuous for a moment before it dies back down. It is warm, obscenely so, especially considering the past few mornings where I could see my breath as I walked the short distance between my third-floor apartment and the garage where my car rests. It is sticky. Just yesterday my heat was on. Today I have all my windows open. It is supposed to storm tonight, and it feels eerily still outside. The frogs and crickets are chirping, quieter now after this last cold snap, but still present. I am desperate for a storm to come tonight, to break this absurd heat snap, unwelcome in the midst of late fall. Sleeping will be a struggle tonight.
Marriage is on everyone's mind. A couple just got engaged - two friends of mine - and despite the inevitability of it all, there is still a buzz in the air. It's the difference between saying that you intend to do something and actually going through with it. It all seems so dangerous, so exciting and risky. I have always been a romantic, but I have usually managed to keep that to myself. So much of me is suspicious, skeptical of things I don't know and, even worse, things that I do know. I'm never quite sure of my own feelings about things. Whether this is a purposeful emotional disconnect or some built-in malfunction in the part of my being that houses the 'appropriate emotional responses' data I am not sure. I never seem to react correctly, at least not compared to the other people who I watch react to the same news. I make an effort to react similarly, though I constantly fear that others notice my longer-than-normal latency with said responses. I don't often feel the correct response to a situation. I must stop and think about it first, putting aside my first few gut reactions until I settle on something that seems appropriate.
Marriage. That's where I was going. It forces you - or at least me - to reevaluate everything. It is strange that the decisions of one pair of people can so strongly effect my outlook, even if it does happen to be only temporarily. I have spent a lot more time thinking about marriage and commitment in the context of my life. At the very least, it has made me less patient as a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden influx of invasive thoughts. I find myself suddenly analyzing every interaction, seeking out what I like and what I cannot stand. What I cannot live without and what I abhor. It is exhausting and distracting and exhilarating to be cataloging my interactions this way. There are some hurdles that I have to ask myself, ones that I will not share here. Things that, unfortunately for me, cannot be easily answered without actually living them first. I have so far found it impossible to give myself satisfactory answers. I can only imagine, than, that the day my relentless search yields a concrete answer will be the one on which I know what I must do next.
It is both wonderful and terrifying.
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