2010

well, first let me begin by apologizing.

i'm very sorry, world. i'm sorry for not posting in a month. i'm sorry for only now posting silly pictures. i am just a whole novel of sorry.

we've done nothing but sit on the couch with a huge down comforter watching movies, eating the most unhealthy food, drinking awesome wine, and catching up on our tivo queue while getting excited about the many changes yet to happen in 2011. and since you can't look forward before you first look back, we've been looking at a lot of photos.

i remember how when, after years of long-distance dating spanning across two countries, we finally lived in the same place permanently we just couldn't believe it. we were in stunned silence for about 6 months at least. we would wake in a panic, still half-asleep and would immediately try to calculate how many days and hours we had left together before one of us would have to board a plane and how long it would be before we saw each other again. when i moved, we would be doing everyday things like brush our teeth or make toast and pause, wide-eyed, and say "we live together. you don't have to leave!" it just seemed so surreal.

we spent 3 years in a perpetual countdown and we just felt plain guilty when it was over. like we were completely undeserving of the blessings we had been given, and undeserving of the pleasures of waking up together without having to worry when one of us would leave. we were waiting for the other shoe to drop, or for a strange twist to happen in the third act to make us feel the consequences of our happiness. watching movies, you never get comfortable with the happiness afforded to the protagonist and you wait and watch and wait and watch for it to all end horribly.

so when my mom got sick, i hate to say it, but part of me just really felt like it was punishment for being so happy. and it took a long while to reconcile with that and realize how awful it was to feel that way.

so the photos this year are of us in a new chapter. being happy means more after experiencing such sorrow, and i love that our smiles have been tarnished and repolished and we just look like we're smiling in a deeper way, a way that to me is so much more significant. you can never go through life and become more innocent or less scarred, and i have become very happy seeing our more recent photos. we're grinning and happy and so much more in love, because we're not happy like we were when we first got married, in stunned silence at our life without worries. we're smiling now from the other side, beaming, with a new understanding of the necessary interplay between the dark and light.