The Worst/Best Year of My Life

I have been married for one year. Joel says it has been the best year of his life. I say that it has been the worst year of my life. Not because of my marriage though. If anything, that has been the reason why I got through this year without totally losing my shit. 

I haven’t felt like the sentiment expressed by many in the church that “i don’t know where i would be without the gospel” is totally sincere, or much more than a cliche truism. I mean, if you didn’t have the gospel, where you would be is not caring that you didn’t have the gospel, most likely, or part of another religious tradition, or you would be on track to find the gospel eventually anyway. It wouldn’t matter, your life path would be totally different. But like most of my cynicism, I eventually come to a point where i have to rescind and eat my words. Because i don’t know where i would be without joel. And that DOES matter because THIS is the life path that i want to be on, not some alternative reality one that doesn’t involve Joel (or okay, the gospel too, if i have to be all honest and non-cynical here).

So this has been the worst year of my life. I have had a full-on crushing bout of Quarter Life Crisis, complete with clinical depression and losses of hope and faith in myself and in the future. (It is also basically the biggest twentysomething cliche i could have picked. let’s get cynical about that sometime.) And to make the biggest understatement about my mental condition that I could possibly make, let’s just say that I spent a lot of nights crying a lot (you know that part where i said that i didn’t “lose my shit”? well, i guess whether i actually kept it together or not is actually debatable.) Joel was incredibly patient through all of this. He was also incredibly funny and good-natured and tried his best to keep me at least treading water. And he did his best to be my at-home therapist, no easy task as my mother and countless former roommates will tell you, since i simultaneously want your advice and want to rebel against any kind of advice you give me. He wasn’t a miracle worker, and as with all hard times in people’s live, you kind of just have to wait it out; there isn’t really much you can do to help or fix it until time or mind just takes its course. But he kept trying, and I always felt incredibly loved and cared for, all year.

I still stand by my statement that it was quite possibly the worst year of my life. But sometime, soon hopefully, I’ll be beyond this whole “i cannot function as an adult omg” episode. Maybe it’s even this coming year. And there were so many awesome parts of this past year, due to Joel and our marriage and all the great things we did together, that even with all the sucky parts, i have to admit that it still was good in many ways. And when the sucky parts are gone, it will be all that much better.

Or be replaced with different sucky parts (SHUT UP CYNICAL ME SHUT UP). 

What marriage is like: