Courage where you are

"When we moved to Bowling Green? No, it wasn't what I expected. The city was a little bit bigger. Our apartment was a little bit smaller. But I found a job after only a couple of months. And that was just in time for Ben to start his first semester, which kept him working something like ... 100 hours a week? Yeah, he's still doing that this semester. He led a climbing trip out of town two weekends ago. then he worked all day and evening Monday. They left Thursday morning for the fall break hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail. He got home Sunday night around 9 and then he had to be at work at 7 in the morning. So it's just ... hard. Right now. Not because I can't spend time on my own – he picked the right girl because I can find things to do. But it's hard. You look someone in the eye and promise him that his adventure will be your adventure when truthfully we've spent our first three years pursuing our own thing. And I can tell it's not how it's supposed to be because we both feel out of breath. We both know we're just surviving here. He walks in most days and makes a new pile of junk in a new corner of our studio apartment that I have to straddle to get to the microwave or the sink or the computer. I tell him every day, 'These piles are driving me crazy. You can't keep doing this.' But we both know I'm just saying it. We both know I'll pick up and he'll make more piles. All I have for him right now is that promise that where he goes, I'll go. And this year that's Kentucky, where he has no personal margin and makes the income of a graduate assistant. I get to write. That's my consolation. It's been ... strange, almost. I've never had so much ambition. I've never been so willing to see the idea in my head and make it happen. Visualizing is a big thing for me. I can remember doing it for the first time when I was 8 or 9 and we had a trampoline in our backyard. I remember daydreaming about doing back flips. I mean, I was scared of getting double bounced. And I'd hit my head on a diving board a couple years earlier while doing a flip. So I was scared. But I wanted to do it and, in my head, I saw myself doing it. But creating has never been that way for me. Usually I have a wild imagination and no way to turn it into real life. Until now. I don't look ahead to next year and imagine everything will be perfect once we move somewhere else. At least I try to avoid it. Even when he feels frustrated with the demands of his job or when he covers his limbs in poison ivy cream because the Southeast can be a miserable place to lead trips ... we both know we asked for this. And there's so many little things I'm thankful for. Nothing ever lasts long and it's so stupid to hate it while it's here. Because later you could realize it was the best thing that's ever happened to you."