this is; i am not

I realized I was really dedicated to this whole getting married business when I wanted stainless steal pots for Christmas, when I wanted to trade my car in for a Prius, when even thinking about listening to the Velvet Underground with Nico made me cry, when he drove back to graduate school and I counted more than 500 days just to know what we were waiting for.

Now there are less than 200 days, and more people than I expected thinking that marriage at ages 22 and 25 is young, irrational, based on an institution, a type of conformity, a loss of independence found only by living alone. And I disagree.

There are times and days where I cannot reconcile myself to the disconnect between emotion and rationality. Days when I am furious at my inability to clarify how the hugs goodbye and the months apart made us sure that we needed more than regularly messing around or weekly going out for dinner.

I need to know that when I turn the coffee on in the morning, he'll be there making sure I let it cool before sipping it. I need to know that when I forget my shampoo by the sink, it will be his hand that reaches through the curtain to hand it to me; that my wet fingers will grab a bit of his thumb when my hand wraps around the bottle.

I need to know that when my statistics courses have covered the café table with formulas and workbooks and Math Camp forms, when the rejection letters come, when I forget a form for our Visa applications, when I walk down the aisle, it is his hand at the small of my back, holding it just enough to let me know he's there.

There are the practical reasons to be married. The shared income, rent, cell phone plan; the person holding you responsible for buying three espressos in one day; the married status that helps us bum around Europe longer. There are the religious reasons to be married. We want to live together. We want children one day. We value the strength it takes to say yes it is you and I will share what I am with you. We value the compassion it takes to say I love you, and this is what I am not. You have seen this and you care for me anyway.

Then, there are the real reasons. There is the fact that, no matter where I could live on my own, what I would see on my own, how I would exercise on my own, I couldn't be on my own in the way that I am with him. I would not push myself to publish. I would not remind myself that to better the world, I must live for others. We would be, as he has said, hollow.

And I accept your denouncement of marriage, your need for independence. And I embrace the freedom of knowing that we will make it There together, wherever there is on whatever day. And I look forward to our plans to stay young together, to share a too small place together until the next phase of our five-year plan--and the throwing away of these plans when moving to Europe is possible, when I'm admitted to Harvard, when he is more than adjunct faculty, when we feel it because the feeling of his hand at the small of my back is all I need to know the next step is the right one.