45 days???

"A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life, to be thankful for the good one. "-Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

In 45 days, I am to kiss my wonderful single life goodbye, and venture into a world I never thought I would one day seriously consider, much more, actually enter: married life. I have read and heard of all the certainties and sureness a woman should be thinking and feeling on the days leading to the wedding, but I wonder how come I'm not as confident as I should be. 

No, I am not uncertain about my feelings because I am more than sure that I love my fiance. My heart is overflowing with love despite our distance, and the mere thought of how wonderful he is makes me sigh and feel all warm inside. There couldn't have been a better half for me, than everything that he already is. But I also know that he will not always be wonderful in my sight, and I won't forever get that fuzzy feeling in my stomach. If I thought we've had trying times before, I know that we were just touching the tip of the iceberg, and there will be bad times, worse times even, one time or another. So, right now I'm laying myself down into a bed I know will not always be full of roses. Why? because I know that whoever I choose to spend my life with, there is no guarantee of a lifetime of bliss and I have realized that there is no other person I would like to lay with in that bed of thorns.

 

45 days into our wedding day, and yet we still don't know for sure where we will be a year from now, or if we will physically be together for good by then. Where's the certainty in that? Long distance relationships (LDRs) are always a struggle. It takes a lot of hard work & constant communication. No matter how much you love the one you're with, there will be temptations, and they always come at your most vulnerable moments, hitting you at your weakest points, and testing your limits. There is no certainty, absolutely none. No guarantees either, even once we're married. 

But there is trust, and in the past years I have come to respect and trust the person my fiance is. I trust that at this point in both our lives we already know that satisfying a curiosities here and there is not worth a lifetime of regret, and that trust can take a lifetime to build but only a second to lose. We both agree that aside from love, we need both trust and respect to make our relationship work. This is something we mutually believe in, and put great importance to in our relationship. I consider myself lucky that I found a person who shares the same values as me on that note. 

When you decide to marry someone, people would ask you how you knew he or she was the one. What makes this one different from all the rest? Why choose this one from all the other willing ones? There are many occasions and reasons that led me to realize that Art is the one I want to spend the rest of my life with, for real. One of which is that I have never had so much respect for any other man, and I love that. I look at him, and I can sincerely say that the person I'm marrying is a good man. I've seen how guys treat the girl their with really well, but treat everybody else like crap. I've never seen this with Art. Not even on his worst days. He is generally kind, not just to me, to my family, to his family, but to everyone around him. At this time, we can see how people try so hard to get ahead of each other, they try to cut corners, and shortchange others for their benefit. I'm not saying everybody else is bad, but I am aware that the kind of honestly and good morale he possesses is a rarity. I have also seen that he is not the kind of person who can deliberately hurt anyone, both physically and emotionally, even when he himself is hurt. I am nowhere close to the person he is, and he makes me want to be a better person in so many ways, without him even asking me to be anything but myself.

Now I'm not trying to say that my fiance is perfect, because he is definitely less than that. ;) Although whatever his shortcomings are, is a topic to be left behind our closed doors. I have come to realize that not one person comes packaged without imperfections, not the person I'm marrying, and especially not me. It was a matter of deciding if I can live with his shortcoming or not. It's wrong to expect people to change, even worse to demand them to. So all I am now is hopeful that we can both come up with a compromise in terms of both our shortcomings, but there are no assurances. So in essence, we're both taking a chance on each other here. 

So yes, I will marry in 45 days certain that I am in love with the person waiting for me at other end of the aisle. There is no one else I'd rather spend the rest of my life loving, struggling, and building dreams upon. But love is not always gonna be enough, it will not always sustain us, and it does not always conquer all. So I am marrying the one I love most with a giant leap of faith. Unsure of what the future holds for us both, but sure that whatever happens we can battle the storms together. Uncertain of many other things, but very certain that we believe in each other enough to trust our happiness in each others hands.