May You Stay Forever Young

I do believe I could potentially be classified as full-on adult these days-
My bills are paid and I have enough money to put money down on a house I am building with my husband who I am married to and filed joint taxes with.  I have a living room full of grown-up furniture and am the proud co-owner of several bottles of Scotch.  I am taking a vacation to Montreal paid mostly with cash next week.  I have a credit score I can be proud of.  I have a job that allowed me to work on the largest transit expansion in the country right now.  And not just menial tasks but actual, meaningful contributions.  My boss informed me that I was on track to take over senior service planner when he leaves that position in 2-3 years. 

In addition to all of this superficial and external indications of adulthood though, I feel more sure of myself, who I am, what I look like, who I allow to be close to me.  And this is the moment of adulthood I have been yearning for since adulthood was a possibility for me.  I have spent so many years feeling unsure of my abilities and decisions and who I was and what I was willing to tolerate. 

Some nights after I plug in my headphones and clean my dishes so that I can clear my head before bed, I dream about all the possibilities of where my life could have ended up had I made other options.  And though there would have been benefits to other options, I always come back to feeling fantastic about the choices I made that brought me to where I am now.  I do not see another path in my life that allows me to be here, now, in this time, in this place.  And for that I am eternally thankful.  I love my life. 

And this is not to say things are perfect.  Some days I literally hate my husband.  He makes me angry, and feel crazy, he pushes me to limits of sanity and causes me to call into question the decision to marry him.  But at the end of the day he was the best choice I could have made.  And for that, I am eternally thankful.  He teaches me patience and compromise.  And he deals with my very straightforward and demanding personality which I can't imagine is an easy thing to do.  It turns out that you can hate your husband sometimes and still be in a happy marriage.  They should teach this to people.  Maybe we would all have different expectations for what our relationships should look like.  My mom tells me this is normal and she has been with my dad for close to 30 years now.

The weirdest thing has been occurring to me lately.  It is the absolute strangest sensation and it just came out of nowhere and has built steam ever since.  I want a kid.  Now.  What. The. Actual. Fuck. is that all about?  I even picked out names and have tried to make Andrew agree to them.  Elijah David Cole or Benjamin Robert Cole if we have a boy and Isabelle (Izzy) Gloria Cole or Willa Rees Cole if we have a girl.  I like Willa and Elijah best. 

I have a considerable amount to be proud of myself for.  And I feel good about what I have been able to accomplish after I finally figured out what that looked like and how to get there. 

For now, things are good.  So I will sit here enjoying my dinner of spiked hot cocoa and just be grateful and present.  They have not always been this way and will not always continue to be this way.  But for now, I am at peace and happy.