How the other half lives

I met a girl the other day who had been with her boyfriend for six years and literally couldn't remember ever spending a night apart. "Oh, I'm sure there were a few nights," she said. The thought of having your partner at your side every night leaves me both starry eyed and baffled. Although I have tried, I literally have no concept of what that would be like. Even more - would I want that? . . . What would it be like to have two lives so completely intertwined so as to hardly differentiate where one starts and other stops? Would it be "us" or would there just stop being a "me?"

Bo is away and like most other times I am left feeling the sense of familiar liberation and worrisome loss of identity. I pride myself on my independence and my own, innate sense of who I am . . . as a wannabe writer, as an adventurer, as a woman . . . all the while reminding myself quite vocally, "I am NOT just a wife."

We are beginning a whole new chapter, and it is hard to not feel like I am just riding on the coattails of another. We are chasing his dreams and watching them come true. And while I couldn't be more proud or excited, its impossible to not be reminded every day that these dreams are his and not mine. I take them on as part of me, but at the same time hoping, praying, aching that in all the hulabaloo, I find myself as well.

Although the unconditional support and partnership of a wife to her husband is vital to any marriage, i am more and more convinced it is just as vital that each wife also have her own identity. Some might disagree, but i believe, without this independent and continually blossoming identity a military wife becomes just a shell. For every woman this identity is different and most definitely evolves throughout her life and her marriage. For some it is the joy of being a mother. For others, it is a homemaker. For still others it could be their office, classroom, boardroom or drawing easel.

I guess I'm still trying to decide what my identity is . . . what it will be. Is your identity something you get to decide? Or is it just handed out like hotdogs in Central Park? Do you really get to choose what goes on it and how it is made and how it looks? Or do you just take what is handed to you and be happy with it?

I want to choose it. I want to create my destiny and not just let it happen. I want excitement and variety. I want travel and adventure and newness every day. I want busyness coupled with the ability to escape. I want to explore not only places but people and things, events and histories. I want to uncover mysteries and awaken people's curiosities. I want to whet their appetite and therefore satisfy my own. I want a challenge, and I want fulfillment.

As a recent college graduate, disenchanted with the workplace i've experienced so far, I'm not sure how realistic my list of wants are. But that is the beauty of youth: huge goals with the naivety of undaunted optimism.

Maybe that is my identity right now: hopeful.

It is a good building block.