i have wedding brain.

i can't help it. i think about it constantly. i want to be done with this godforsaken masters degree and be engaged and plan a wedding and get married and in a few years, start a family. it's like i turned 25 and some clock inside of me went DING! marriage and baby time! let's get moving!

arizona and i have talked about the future; i know that he's going to ask me to marry him. i'm guessing that it will probably happen when i finish my degree in may and move out there, which is a perfectly reasonable and logical time for it happen. but part of my brain is all bouncy and excited and wants to be engaged RIGHTNOW, which is certainly not helped by him introducing me to friends as "the girl i'm going to marry." brain, we need to focus on school! there are papers to write, presentations to prepare, exams to study for...nine months from now, you are allowed to reduce yourself to mush thinking about weddings. right now, you need to keep your eye on the ball.

lord help me. i just don't care about school right now.

it's always hardest right after he leaves...

my pillows still smell like him. he left a shirt hanging. his leftover pizza is in my refrigerator. his towel is hanging in the bathroom. his water glass is still beside the bed. it always takes me a few days to straighten up, move back to the middle of the bed, wash that glass...and by then the scent is gone from the pillows and the leftovers have been eaten or thrown away and life is back to my routine of school sleep repeat. and we are back to a relationship of emails and phone calls and booking that next airline ticket.

and it's okay that way for now. it has to be. he can't leave his job and move back here, i can't give up on my masters degree and move out there. we've got to stick it out another nine months or so. and the time that we have together is wonderful and precious and looking forward to it gets me through everything else i need to slog through to get from point a to point b. but right after he leaves, i am overwhelmed by the sadness, the feeling that i wish so badly that we didn't have to live this out in three day increments, that i could see him every day and never have to deal with the goodbye part where we stand in the airport parking garage and he tries not to cry and i don't bother trying at all. and then suddenly he's 2600 miles away again for another month or more. it's worth it, all of it...i have absolutely not a question in my mind of that. but it's so hard right after he leaves...