pop the champagne

J submitted his dissertation today. I want to cry/smile/love/laugh/sleep. I want to sigh with relief and salute him. But most of all I want to scream to the world that WE did it! WE made it! WE are still a whole, a couple, a unit.

I will keep it short, I have a flute waiting. We are not completely done. Defence takes place in late June, but who cares about defending when it is out of our hands for now.

It has been a bumpy road – one of the worst I have ever travelled, but WE made it. Cheers to us.

And to you: I am proud of you; I am proud of us. I have hated few things the way I have hated this, but if it has taught me anything it is that love does really concur all. I love you with every bit of my body though it has resembled a flat tire lately. I love you!

acknowledged

We have been talking about the acknowledgement from the very beginning. We have laughed at other people’s acknowledgements and made up our own – often in silly accents.

As we lie next to each other in bed Tuesday night, he asks me what I expect him to write in the acknowledgement. I tell him to write what is on his mind and I stress how important I think it is that he writes something he is comfortable writing. He tells me that he has already written it and that he just wanted to know.

He leaves another chapter for me to proof read on the table Tuesday night. I find it this morning, see the word “Preface” on the first page and leave for work thinking I will look at it later. When I come home in the afternoon and sit at my desk, I wonder when or if I will get to read the acknowledgement.

I glance at the preface and have already decided to do the proof reading later when I suddenly see the words “thanks to” repeated several times on the first page. As I read through it I realise that the preface contains the acknowledgements and that I must be there.

I am the last paragraph of the preface. I read through his words; One by one I gulp them down. They leave me teary-eyed at my desk. They are simple and lovely – they are so him. They are words I could not have put together myself. I end up crying and when I talk to him on the phone a little later I pretend not having read anything yet because I am still dizzy from his beautiful words and gratitude. When finally admitting – hours later – that I have read the words, the only thing I am able to whisper is: Thank you.

waiting

What I should have done last night was to write a post entitled “waiting” – the very post I am writing now. “Waiting” actually sums up my life way better than “low point”. Not that the latter isn’t a suitable description, it is just not the best. Waiting is.

I looked up “waiting” to get the exact definition and thought it rather funny how I found myself faced with these words: “ wait ~ (for sth) to hope or watch for sth to happen, especially for a long time.”

“Especially for a long time.” Those words are so right, so fitting. I had wondered what these final days would be like. I knew they would be difficult and straining and that we wouldn’t see each other very much, but they have still surprised me. It has taken me by surprise how everlasting they seem to be.

J was in the shower this morning when I got up and went to brush my teeth. I am not kidding when I write that I was a little shocked when he drew the curtain. He had told me that someone had asked him the previous day if he was growing a beard, and I knew he hadn’t shaved in a while, but I wasn’t prepared for the caveman I was faced with. We talk on the phone several times a day, but at the moment the only time we actually spent together is when we sleep. And J gets up before my eyes are open and goes to bed (and comes home) long after my eyes have closed. We are kind of having a phone relationship despite living together.

I am not saying that my situation is unbearable and can be compared to his. I know that he is stressed out and working like a mad and looking desperately for the 25th hour of the day. But I want people to know that being the partner isn’t easy. J is wrapped up in writing and is never at home, so I tackle family and friends phoning to hear how he is doing. And I don’t really know what to answer when his mother asks me if he is going to be alright – or when my mother asks me if he has taken to sleeping at the desk instead of coming home. Do they want the truth or do they want some sugar-coated version of reality we all know is false? This weekend a friend of mine phoned and asked if he had submitted the dissertation yet. I said no and foolishly told her when he planned to do it. At the other end of the line she laughed and said “he just keeps pushing the submission, doesn’t he?”

So I have stopped telling people when he plans to submit. The date has been pushed back and forth many times and I don’t want people to get the impression he’s pushing the submission. I want people to get the impression he is doing his best. He deserves nothing less.

I am ready to celebrate, to live another life. I am ready to sleep in and get to know him all over. I am ready for the summer and our life to show me it was nothing less than worth the wait.

low point

Last night while I ate, I starting watching The Holiday. I am only telling because I trust you will not judge me, because I believe you can handle this piece of information.

At some point Kate Winslet’s character Iris tries to kill herself instead of making tea, and when she realises what she’s doing, she utters “low point, LOW POINT!”

Low point pretty much sums up my life at the moment. Everything is on hold while J writes the final words of his dissertation. A long time ago we took deep breaths and decided we wanted to get through this. We are nearly there, but it is of vital importance that we get there soon as I am running out of air – and I am not the only one.

Except for my parents who show up occasionally, I can’t remember when the last time was that we had people over – not for dinner, but for anything. These past months have been all about cooking things which are easily reheated so that supper doesn’t require us actually being in the same room at the same time. I have tried to make the most of the evenings and weekends on my own. I have worked late, seen friends, blogged. And I have benefited from our rather large collection of DVDs. And until recently it was great, but I am so fed up with watching the ones worth watching more than once that last night I resorted to the seasonal films. You can close your eyes for a minute or two, but the sentence is still there when you open them again. There you have it: I resorted to the seasonal films.

And so I sat in my living room – my lovely sun filled living room, my lovely spring filled and no trace of Christmas living room – and ate pizza (homemade which makes it a little more okay) and watched The Holiday. And when Kate Winslet uttered “low point, low point”, I wondered if she was actually talking to me and hid my face a little and looked around to see if anyone was watching, but thankfully I was the only witness.

talk

I am surrounded by pregnant women. It is mid February many years ago, my friend is getting married and we are throwing her a hen party. J is in Switzerland. It has been 5 months since I said goodbye to him at the airport after three weeks of being together. I have visited him twice and he was home for Christmas, but our relationship is still mainly built upon phone calls and emails.

They have these huge round bellies which scare me. They have husbands. They have jobs and places of their own. Most of them are a couple or five years older than me. I am still just giddy with new love and when one of them asks me “if he is the one”, I blush and don’t know what to answer.

When the night is over I am dizzy with baby talk and bellies. I am left feeling unsure about my own relationship because I cannot relate to any of the things the others are talking about. I don’t see myself marry yet; I don’t see myself having kids yet. I see myself getting to know the man I am very hopeful about, I am wishing for the days to come when we will wake up next to each other – the days when phone calls will be short and the number of goodbyes will increase, but the time spent apart will be considerably shorter.

+++

Late April, recently. Another bride to be, another hen party. There is only one pregnant belly, but a handful of mothers. At some point I am walking between two of the mothers. They get to talking about their husbands and running and baby joggers and I am literally stuck between them not knowing what to say and where to look.

“What about you?” she – my age, mother of one – asks me in a bubble bath that is scented with something the guy said would resemble “a walk in the forest”. I react like I always do. I feel caught of guard and give the “oh, you know J needs to hand in his PhD and get a job and our situation is just so unknown”-speech that I am used to giving. I wonder if she can hear the falseness of the story. What would she say if I told her that though I have known for a week it was this very morning my body showed me how not pregnant I am. Luckily she doesn’t ask further questions and finds another topic to talk about.

Later I survive an unstoppable list of “he and his wife have two children; she is pregnant with number two; they got their first last week,” when I – lack of anything else to talk about – asks if one of the girls at the party knows how the people we once both knew are doing. I know you shouldn’t ask if you don’t want to know, but I didn’t ask about the kids. That was just the answers I got. Years ago I would have been told where they worked, if they had gotten their degrees yet, now apparently we have reached the “age of having babies” and though you don’t ask about that specifically, it is the information you get.

“I just need to know if they will hire me permanently. The minute they say yes, I say go. Then we are going to have children,” she says with determination. The mothers surrounding her are nodding their heads. No one mentions the “what if it doesn’t happen right away”, but I wonder if I am the only one who thinks it. I remember back to last year when I got my first job and we talked about how it would be perfect if we could try for an April or May baby so that I could go straight from my temporary job to materntiy leave. Life turned out in such a way, we never even tried for that spring 08 baby.

+++

“It will cost you,” I tell him when he asks me to proof read. “I know, I know,” he says. He is laughing and something in his voice surprises me. “A combination, it is going to cost me a combination of you and me,” he says, his voice as sweet as ever, and I can’t help but smile. However bumpy the road feels and is and will feel and be, we are still on it – together.

coming up

I am turning 30 in 10 months. I am not hyperventilating or gasping for air. Turning 30 seems far away, and I think that is because I have a feeling of having been 29 for ages though it has only been two months. Time is – as I have written or at least planned to write earlier – a rather difficult thing in a PhD household. Though we talk about how time is flying and how there isn’t enough time, it somehow seems days, weeks, months are longer and sometimes never-ending. (They of course aren’t.)

What’s so big about turning 30? I get why 18 is huge, because you go from child to adult overnight and suddenly you are allowed to drive and vote and if you have a job your salary is almost doubled. Overnight. It is weird how you are a child when you go to bed and an adult when you wake up, as if someone poured some grownup sense into you while you were sleeping. But turning 30 will gain me only two rights and those are to talk about people in their twenties as “young senseless people” and moan over the fact that “OMG my next big b-day is 40!” No doubling of salaries and no further vehicles to learn how to drive.

Lots of people have lists of things to do before they turn 30. I don’t. I sometimes wonder whether I should try to make such a list, but 1) I have already got a list of things I would love to do/happen this year and 2) I don’t need to learn how to knit, go bungee jumping or have a tattoo before my birthday. I want to be happy and I want to do things which will make me happy and if it is possible, I would like for this to happen sooner rather than later – why wait for my birthday?

The only thing that haunts me about the upcoming birthday and the “mere” 10 months it’s away, is that my chances of having a baby before turning 30 are running out. And though I know and will guarantee to love a baby just as much should it choose not to come before I have turned 30, it still breaks my heart a little to see my chances of being a 29 year old mum (even if only by days) slip away. If turning 30 marks nothing else, it marks the difference between being a young mum and an old. At least in my world.

things you did not know

• I am thin with fat legs. I hate my legs. My dad heard me complaining about my “poles” once and, honestly, said “you got those from me, sorry.” No girl wants to hear that! I still haven’t forgiven him.

• I fell in love with a boy with brown eyes and before knowing what it would lead to, I worried I wouldn’t have kids with blue eyes.

• I have a really nice handwriting and I am offended when people look at something I have written and don’t compliment it.

• I own everything Jane Austen – in two languages.

• I used to wish I was able to go to sleep and wake up 40 years from now so I wouldn’t have to worry about things, but could sit surrounded by husband, children and grandchildren and look back on a pleasantly lived life.

• I started drinking coffee because of Reality Bites.

• I told J I would never take his last name within a couple of weeks after we got together. It’s not because of his name, but I have never wanted another name. I love my own and I want to keep it.

• If I could only listen to one kind of music for the rest of my life, I would choose jazz.

• I love chick flicks, but I am not very good with chick lit.

• During my first month at work my boss wondered whether hiring me was the right decision. She told me this 5 months later when she was sure it was.

• An Australian scarred me for life when I was 3.

and…

• I am having bacon wrapped chicken for dinner.

today (22/4)

I wish:
The next two weeks will be bearable and nice to my boyfriend.
I didn’t worry so much about freezing and dared wear t-shirts to work.
That life after the first week of May will be joyous and fun and overwhelming.
I had a little combination of me and my boyfriend of whom I could tell funny stories and post pictures.
I wasn’t so impatient.

I’m happy:
I have learned to be more positive and believe in things.
J is able to see the end of it - and that I am too.
I feel healthy and well.
Spring has finally sprung.
I can still hope.