Whirlwind

It’s been…a month (?) since I last wrote.

What a whirlwind. My new apartment is amazing. I am still only spending every other night there and the rest at CJs so the dining room is still full of boxes of odds and ends. I just finished organizing my bathroom today.

The engagement is official and everyone knows and it is amazing and happy. Planning for this wedding is taking up a surprising amount of time. CJ is completely baffled by American wedding traditions, which are so much more complex than in Chile. It is endearing.

I was terrified to tell Skippy about the engagement. What if his main reason for keeping me around all this time was that he was hoping for me to change my mind about us rather than because he can’t live without my friendship. I had serious doubts, but after a few shocked seconds he faked happiness for me. Then covered with awkward comedy. Despite his forced assurances, things have changed. Forever. It was inevitable and unavoidable, however devastating.

Just as inevitable are the stressful, frustrating, negative  things that dot our days no matter how rosy they are. But my ability to focus on the positive is surprising even me. When did I become this person, able to find the threads of joy and love and goodness running through every situation? I think she was always in there, struggling to exist. She was the one who was able to find beauty in pain. But now I am her all the time. And it is…better than anything.