Saturday 02 March 2002

Well gee whiz, we've been married a whole month. It's difficult to believe; yet not. I feel we've been together forever, in a good way. The level of comfort, the "fit", the way we work as a team, the fact that we are most definitely a team. It really hasn't been a long time ... only seven months have passed, after all, since I arrived in N. Ireland and moved in with the boy.

So the question on everyone's lips (and yes, we have been asked this a lot, much to my surprise) is:  how are we finding married life?

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I'm liking the married state enormously, for someone who thought she didn't have a snowflake's chance in hell of ever meeting someone to love and be compatible with, let alone have those feelings returned; not to mention the improbability of even enjoying the state owing to being a solitary type, preferring my own space, my own things in the right place, being easily annoyed by minor transgressions, my usual high levels of snitchiness, not to mention the ongoing health issues and occasional misery, which I really honestly felt shouldn't be visited upon an innocent human being.

Yet from the very first, way back when Sam first visited and stayed with me in Perth, we've meshed as a team.  I haven't had to control snitchy or bitchy urges, because I've been pretty much snitch-free.  I guess that's because I'm happy. Wow, what a revelation. D'oh.  I don't think I realised before how much of my self-hatred was tied up with the fact that I felt I was a horrible person, and I was only a horrible person (or more precisely, an occasionally bad-tempered, impatient person) because I was unhappy. The things you do to yourself and to others when you're intensely unhappy, sheesh.

So yes, I'm happy.  Sam makes me happy, of course, by being loving and funny and kind and generally wonderful, but what really gives me the happies is that I make Sam happy - just by being me. This is new - the realisation that my mere existence can make someone feel so good about life and themselves. So its the opposite of a vicious circle - he makes me happy so I'm happy so I make him happy so he's happy so he makes me happy and I think I've rambled and garbled on quite enough for now.

What I love most is how we talk.  We've never had to have one of those "we need to talk" kind of talks, pretty much because we talk all the time. Sure there have been issues, and times we had to work serious stuff out, but given the general undertaking of our getting together (with the whole long distance, not-even-dating-before-getting-engaged-and-living together, moving hemispheres thing), and our real and deep commitment to each other, it is hardly surprising that the need for serious talk has arisen. It would be far more worrisome, I'm sure, if we weren't communicating on that level. However, we've never had to say "we need to talk" because we talk all the time. Serious talk, silly talk, loving talk, totally mad insane crazy talk. Good talk.

Then again, the entire relationship was really begun and built on talk and communication (we *met* in person first - it was all telecommunicational after that though). We didn't have the physical or trivial distractions other couples have. We had to communicate on a level whereby there could be no misunderstandings or misreadings as we didn't have the luxuries of body language cues or make-up sex. We had to be totally honest with each other, as honest if not more so than with oneself, and there could be no game playing. And having got into that style of communication, so much so that it was a habit, we still communicate that way even with the distractions etc etc. Its a good thing, a very very good thing we have going.

And best of all, he makes me laugh. And maybe even better, and more surprising, is that I make him laugh. I am reminded of a scene in an obscure Brit movie, In the Bleak Midwinter aka A Midwinter's Tale about a group of actors putting on Hamlet in a grim gruesome church at Christmas-time (it stars Julia Sawalha and Michael Maloney who is absolutely gorgeous and was also in Truly Madly Deeply) ... ANYway, two of the minor actors get together, and shyly tell each other that "(I) can be funny with you" ... its very touching.  It is true that I am funnier, my sense of humour is better, sharper, wittier, and I laugh/giggle/snicker/cackle a lot more these days.

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The other question I get asked a lot - I don't think Sam does, so much - is "when are you going to have kids?". My gut response is usually something along the lines of "Would you ever fuck OFF" but of course, I don't say that, even if I do think I have every right to, regarding such a rude question about such an intensely personal subject matter. I tend to go with the "we'll see" or Princess Anne's "well you do know, its one of those things that can happen if one is female and married/with a male partner".

And no, I'm not telling you either. Mostly because; its complicated, scarey and I don't know.

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Ben Folds' "The Luckiest" (from Rockin' the Suburbs) has been getting a lot of airplay around here.  I think Sam has decided to like the track, against his better judgement and taste or whatever, purely out of self defence. It's my favourite song because it's about me and how lucky I am, its about Sam and how lucky I am that I met him, that we got together. I'm sure I don't need to point out all the parallels here; just read the lyrics.

I don’t get many things right the first time
in fact, I am told that a lot
now I know all the wrong turns,
the stumbles and falls brought me here
and where was I before the day
that I first saw your lovely face?
now I see it every day
and I know
that I am, I am
I am the luckiest

What if I’d been born fifty years before you
in a house on the street where you live?
maybe I’d be outside as you passed on your bike
would  know?
and in a wide sea of eyes,
I see one pair that I recognize
and I know
that I am, I am
I am the luckiest

I love you more than I have
ever found a way to say to you

Next door there’s an old man who lived to his nineties
and one day, passed away, in his sleep
and his wife, she stayed
for a couple of days and passed away
I’m sorry, I know that’s a
strange way to tell you that I know
we belong

that I know
that I am, I am
I am the luckiest.

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