Living in anticipation

Tonight, I'm missing being held. I miss touch. I know I'm not a touchy person, but that rule didn't apply with my husband... I loved it when he would come up behind me and hug me... I loved it when he could lay next to me and put his arm around my waist... I loved the simple act of holding his hand. I want nothing more than to be able to go cry into his shoulder, right now. He never cared if I got mascara on his shirt... Except that if I could do that, I would have no reason to cry....

Oh blogging world, please don't think I'm a horrible person, or that I didn't love Nathan with all that I have, but I can't live my life alone... I need someone to share my life with... I need to share someone else's life. And if that's not in the cards then God's gonna be having to do a mighty work in me, because right now I long for that connection. I long for the person who can make me laugh and finish my sentences. I long for the person who can explain my quirks to others... quirks I didn't even notice I had. I long for the special smiles that say, "You are totally adorable."  I long for inside jokes and conversations that happen as you fall asleep and being able to hug someone for as long as I want without it being weird. I don't just long for the past, though... I long for the future... I want new discoveries and new inside jokes and things that I can't even imagine right now because they are so specific to my relationship with some other person... I want children and a family. I don't know where my road is leading, but I know that I can't imagine it (right now) without someone to share it with me. None of this is to say that I'm gonna start dating the next available man just because he shows interest- while I know that what Nathan and I had was special  and wholly unique, I'm not willing to date someone else without at least the potential  to have something equally special and unique. I, perhaps more than most, know not to settle for just, "good enough." But I'm not going to settle for my love story to be over at 27, either.

Ach! Blogging is such a conundrum. I try to be totally honest, and yet I fear the judgment that I know is possible. I've thought of all the different responses to this... but basically it come down to this for me: I feel how I feel, as I feel it, and I trust God to lead the right person into my life at the right time. He's done it before, on numerous occasions... So I sit here and try and plan out my life with the limited knowledge/resources I have at my disposal... and God chortles up there in the sky and then rearranges everything.

I think I have to live my life in anticipation of the good, and just accept the bad as it comes. I think that's how I stay sane.

In other news, tonight I was reminded of walking to class in Strong Hall, one fall semester. I seemed to end up walking behind a professor most days that I had this particular class, and he always smoked a pipe. For a long time I couldn't figure out why Strong Hall always smelled so good at that particular time... then finally I figured out one day that it was this professor's pipe tobacco, because I was walking relatively close behind him and the scent was strong... so I breathed in too deeply and started coughing... sometimes I'm oblivious. It reminds me of the Hayley Mills version of "The Parent Trap" where she says she is "Making a memory" so that "Years from now, when I'm all grown up, I'll always remember my grandfather and how he always smelled of...  peppermint and pipe tobacco."