a year ago your car went off a cliff / and you saw an angel in midair who said you'd live / that's a story you can give

Here's a thing about relationships: I have spent so very much of my life trying not to care too much, get too attached, need another person, that I feel microchipped. It's like there's a program in my head that plays this loop of stupid Rules-esque cautions at me when I try to think about it. So it's hard for me to say what exactly it is that's the scary part about committment, or more specifically, the committment I'm having a big party about in a week.

It's not the boy. spook is like a living repudiation of all those times someone said to me "You expect too much from people. You're always going to be disappointed." He's everything I wanted, and a bunch of things I didn't know I wanted, and some things I didn't want that have turned out to be a gift in spite of me. Which is why the hot dogs and the frisbee and the photographer. And see, there, there's another bit of it: we are an ironic people, and passion is a foreign territory.

I wanted this party because I wanted the ritual of it, and now that I'm part way in, I wonder if some of the point of the ritual isn't just to carry you past the terror. To stand in front of another person and say "I believe in you, and I love you, and you are where I want to live my life; you are the country I call home," that's one of the most frightening things I can imagine. To declare my heart knowing that love and dedication don't always carry the day, to be willing to be wrong because I believe deeply that this is right--I'm frightened. We aren't having a wedding like other people's weddings, and so I don't have to try and say those things in front of other people, which is good because I think I'd be crying so hard no one would understand my for better and for worses.

I could never be this brave if it weren't for my friends, the people who hold up the sky. I feel small in the face of their generosity. They have taken my not-a-wedding and treated it exactly like something more traditional, not to dismiss or paper over my difference, but to celebrate it with the same care they would take for anyone else. And though everyone has been lovely, let me name some names: Adam, Sarah, Michelle, Paul, I do not know what I would do without you.

Eight days left till Harry Potter.