2005

Dominic and I spent New Year's Eve with the Bauer's, a couple with whom we're familiar through the Air Force, and their friends, a couple who just got engaged. It seemed strange to me--all three of us, newlyweds or engaged--and I can so easily remember a time in my life when being single was part of the orderly route of the world on its axis, natural and dependable, always spinning, always the same. But now I am married, we're married, and most of our friends from now on will be married as well. It's no secret that Dominic was, is, my first relationship of any kind of weight or substance or longevity ever, so honestly I can't help but feel shocked every now and then when I realize how quickly and permanently my life changed once he entered it. All of it has been so good.

2005 marks the beginning of our first full year of marriage. It's a year that I was never even sure would ever exist, honestly, because all throughout college, 2004 represented the end of everything I was familiar with--school, Alabama, my friends, my family to a certain extent--and 2005 loomed like a phantom I didn't want to think about. But it has come for me anyway, and who knew it would begin like this, a bright new world, a future limitless and wide open.



Happy New Year, everyone.