Freedom can be huge and terrifying.
Dave and I have been thinking about our freedom a lot, lately; it's becoming more and more clear just how open our future is right now.
Right now, our only clear objective is for him to finish school and get his Master's degree in hand. Under the best of circumstances, that will happen in September, just four months from now. And in September, we'll hit the edge of the map.
Uncharted freedom is not a place I really ever anticipated. Frankly, I don't really know what to do with it.
In this generation, there seems to be an expected structure of life events: graduate from high school, go to college, start a career, get married, buy a house, make babies, and raise a family.
I am 25 and Dave is 28. We have been together for 7 years, and married for 3 and a half. I've finished college, and Dave is almost done with his schooling, too. After that, he will, of course, begin applying for jobs, and we have no idea what job he will get and if it will keep us in Ohio or take us somewhere else. We are old enough that a lot of our contemporaries - former roommates, high school friends, etc. - have, either intentionally or accidentally, started the family phase of life.
But we're standing together at the edge of our known world. I am not pregnant, nor am I planning to become so for at least a couple of years. We're at the edge of the map, and we are not ready for kids.
So what is next? What drives our life? How do we decide
As a kid, life was structured by parents and siblings, school and sports and piano lessons. In college, Dave and I's lives were structured by classes and our high-involvement church.
But things started changing when we got married.
We moved many times when we lived with our church friends, but we never were the ones to decide the where and the when of it. Suddenly, now we had to pick where we wanted to live, and we alone were responsible for those bills. Then I graduated from college, and classes were no longer a dictator in my schedule. A few months after that, we left the church that had been our whole social life. I remember how terrifying to me those empty evenings were when they yawned out ahead of me, minutes in my hand that I had never been taught how to spend.
And now our last dictator, Dave's schooling, is on the brink of departure. The expanse of our freedom consumes the horizon, awesome and terrifying and beautiful. The huge wide world is so open to us, clean white paper, uncarved marble. People, many many people, have died to protect the sanctity of this.
And I think Dave and I are both afraid of doing it wrong.
Because, whatever we choose, we choose it; and to choose one thing is to unchoose a thousand others. And that's a part of growing up that we really haven't experienced yet, outside of the choice of choosing each other. There was always a parent, a mentor, a teacher, a school, a church, an institution, some thing or one to share or take the blame for our life circumstances.
But here we are, on the edge of the map, no lines to guide us.
It is glorious and terrifying.
Dave and I have been thinking about our freedom a lot, lately; it's becoming more and more clear just how open our future is right now.
Right now, our only clear objective is for him to finish school and get his Master's degree in hand. Under the best of circumstances, that will happen in September, just four months from now. And in September, we'll hit the edge of the map.
Uncharted freedom is not a place I really ever anticipated. Frankly, I don't really know what to do with it.
In this generation, there seems to be an expected structure of life events: graduate from high school, go to college, start a career, get married, buy a house, make babies, and raise a family.
I am 25 and Dave is 28. We have been together for 7 years, and married for 3 and a half. I've finished college, and Dave is almost done with his schooling, too. After that, he will, of course, begin applying for jobs, and we have no idea what job he will get and if it will keep us in Ohio or take us somewhere else. We are old enough that a lot of our contemporaries - former roommates, high school friends, etc. - have, either intentionally or accidentally, started the family phase of life.
But we're standing together at the edge of our known world. I am not pregnant, nor am I planning to become so for at least a couple of years. We're at the edge of the map, and we are not ready for kids.
So what is next? What drives our life? How do we decide
As a kid, life was structured by parents and siblings, school and sports and piano lessons. In college, Dave and I's lives were structured by classes and our high-involvement church.
But things started changing when we got married.
We moved many times when we lived with our church friends, but we never were the ones to decide the where and the when of it. Suddenly, now we had to pick where we wanted to live, and we alone were responsible for those bills. Then I graduated from college, and classes were no longer a dictator in my schedule. A few months after that, we left the church that had been our whole social life. I remember how terrifying to me those empty evenings were when they yawned out ahead of me, minutes in my hand that I had never been taught how to spend.
And now our last dictator, Dave's schooling, is on the brink of departure. The expanse of our freedom consumes the horizon, awesome and terrifying and beautiful. The huge wide world is so open to us, clean white paper, uncarved marble. People, many many people, have died to protect the sanctity of this.
And I think Dave and I are both afraid of doing it wrong.
Because, whatever we choose, we choose it; and to choose one thing is to unchoose a thousand others. And that's a part of growing up that we really haven't experienced yet, outside of the choice of choosing each other. There was always a parent, a mentor, a teacher, a school, a church, an institution, some thing or one to share or take the blame for our life circumstances.
But here we are, on the edge of the map, no lines to guide us.
It is glorious and terrifying.
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