Purly Girl Gets Married (Again)

I am quite aware (thanks to those of you who've followed my blog in vain) that I have yet to post since my nuptials on New Years Eve. Although it's hard to believe this if you know me at all, but I haven't quite known what to say. Yes, I am in fact married again. There was a lovely wedding and reception that was fantasic and magical and unquestionably FUN, but still I couldn't figure out what I had to say about it.

I've been working a ridiculous amount of hours thanks to progress in my retail career, and that could be an excuse for all manor of things, even legitimately so at times, but that isn't really it. And stories about my surreal new career path aside, the real truth is that I've been at a loss for how to tell the story.

There is the American Hollywood version of the 2nd marriage story. In this version we'd paint the former marriages and spouses as somehow tragic and doomed, mixed with some sordid villainous imagery of the prior partners, whilst new partners rescued us from our pasts bringing new simplicity and joy. Or you could go the French film route and somehow all of it is a loose and ill-defined tragedy at the hands and whims of emotion and fate, yet our current love is the tragedy that binds us (although there are days it feels that way, I don't think that fits either.) Then there is that extreme romantic notion that this person is THE person that you've really been waiting for your whole life and everything before somehow magically led up to it. That one especially doesn't resonate with me.

Here is what I do know. Ten years after marriage no. 1 I'm less principled about some things, and more principled about others. I'm less concerned about what my name is on paper and more concerned about what I've ACTUALLY given up for my partner. I'm less certain about what I either do or do not know or believe about God and religion, and more willing to accept and accommodate my partners beliefs. I am more willing to communicate and less willing to ignore. I realize more every day that love is so much more about what we do and the choices that we make and the feelings grow out of all of that instead of the inverse. At some point I finally let myself consider what it was I really wanted out of life instead of trying to live some sort of imagined life that I should want and then it all shifted.

I'm still not quite sure how it will all come together, but my husband and I are at least on the same page when we are sorting out a shared life. We are best friends who have common interests and a great amount of chemistry. We enjoy our time together, and there is a long list of things we love to do together. Our life is exceedingly complex because we are trying to juggle shared parenting of his daughter and two less than ideal careers in a house we would love nothing more than to unload, in a lackluster town we dislike. At varied moments any one of those elements can become a distraction from the bigger picture of our family life and we are early in our marriage trying to eek out the joys of life from the elements we can control.

I don't know what kind of story that is, it's real, it's messy, and highly stressful and confusing. What I know for sure is that we've decided we're on the same team and we won't settle. We didn't enter this marriage with the luxury of a notion of assumed permanence. We know all too well that marriages do end and we live with the fallout of that every day. We have a very practical understanding of love that we didn't have in our first marriages, and we aren't likely to take that lightly. We love each other and we are less inclined to leave all of that to chance. We will always find a way to live a life less ordinary no matter what the circumstances and a love like that fills my heart with hope and joy.