I wanted someone to do responsible things with. Someone who will sit late night with me at the kitchen table, binging on snacks, listening to good music while reconfiguring our budget in preparation for our next big financial move. We could challenge each other to see who can save the most money in a week, winner gets whatever they want in bed. Someone who will spontaneously say "get up, our cars are gross, let's go clean them. Now." and we somehow wind up doing yard work because it has to get done and it's better to do it together. Someone who can make the most of a trip to the grocery store because being an adult and doing adult things is only miserable for miserable people but...

We're happy people.

We're happy people that feel alive when we go on hikes to hidden spots in the woods but not as alive as we feel when we take a random walk around the neighborhood at sunset after a hard day of work. We're happy people that still build blanket forts in the living room and make plans to build our kids a treehouse that is kind of secretly for us too because when the kids stay with their grandparents on Saturday night, we're up in the treehouse telling cheesy ghost stories under the light of a lantern and maybe making out a little, too.

We're adventurous people that take day trips to explore small towns and have thrift store challenges to buy each other weird gifts. We're happy, adventurous people that take the city bus to a local bar we don't belong in at 2:45 on a Thursday when we should be at work.

We've fooled the world into thinking we're your standard, suburban couple but really they haven't seen what madness we can pull of in a matter of 5 minutes behind a closed laundry room door.

And when you're on the computer reading another bogus fake news article, i'll casually walk by and smack the back of your head to let you know I still see you and when i'm laying in bed almost finished reading an entire novel in one sitting, you'll yank the covers off of me because I really need to get up and get circulation going again... but we're fine doing loner things because we more than make up for it when we are together.

And we get each other. I know how to make you shine in front of your boss and you know just what to say to get me out of a potentially awkward social encounter. You don't have to buy me jewelry, just stop at the gas station on your way home and get my favorite snack. And when you see me getting kind of pudgy from my hermit, couch potato phase, you'll casually sneak healthier foods in the house and suggest salad for dinner one night out of the week because you want to see me healthy.

We can be bored together without expecting the other to entertain. We can be mad at each other and get in dumb fights over dumb things and make up in the dumbest ways like challenging each other to a wrestling match on couch cushions strewn across the living room floor. But we can be serious when it's time to be serious and we're both equally serious because we're both equally invested because it's not your life or mine, it's ours and we're in control of it. Equally. You can tell me i've been lazy and I can refuse to accept it and I can tell you that you made a dumb purchase that set us back way more than we can afford and you can stand by that dumb purchase until the day you die and i'll love you just the same because we're not perfect and we're okay with that. I can hate the way you do your hair and you can think my sandals are ugly as hell. I can think you sometimes sound like an arrogant prick and you can think I sometimes come off as a by-the-book prude and it's not the end of us.

But I snap out of the daydream and come back to the mounting complications and letdowns that i'm sitting on and realize that life doesn't work this way because people who want that life rarely find each other and if they find each other they don't want each other and if they happen to want each other they still don't end up together.

I have a crush on possibilities while being crushed by reality. Life doesn't have to be miserable.

Life doesn't have to be miserable.

Life doesn't have to be miserable.

Life is not miserable. Life is what it is. It doesn't change for you or me.