As I’ve been diving back into school work, made nervous by professors levelling truisms at me like, “Time stops for no one!” from the pages of my course packages, I’ve been clinging to the comfort of normal to keep me calm and centred.

I’m really good at organizing but not very good at slowing down, so I make lists and add inserts to my daytimer to remind me of all the things I have to do, versus all the things I want to do. There are little sheets of vellum pressed in between pages with items like:

– Take bubble baths
– Bake
– Read books
– Go ice skating
– Be an active participant in your marriage

written on them in the hopes that when something comes up, I remember to make time for my life as well as my acquaintances and appointments.

Calm and centred is always what I’m aiming for. But soon enough life starts to rock at me gently, like I’m a dancer on a stage doing pirouettes. I know I’m turning, but I’m spotting and every time I turn my head I keep coming back to “calm”. I only look away for a second, what can it hurt?

But it can move so fast from a turning where I’m in control to being a kid on a tilt a whirl that I don’t notice when it happens. It’s like being small enough that the bars on the ride don’t hold me in properly, so I slam from side to side, bruising my hips and only seeing the sky outside the car for a moment when the rest of the ride can’t block my view.

Being in school again has been tough stuff, made harder by challenges I just didn’t see coming. In October and November I felt like I was in first year again, Sundays had expanded to include a designated bawling session where I just collapsed for a good long while until I was ready to try to stand on shaky legs. Mister had been changing since the summer, but finally went from sad and tired to plunging into a frightening depression in late fall. It took over our whole lives and it was just too scary to write about until I knew we were out. Everything was bad and strange. We were terrified. I watched him change into someone who looked and smelled like my husband, but who could only react to things like an echo of my Mister would. It was a strange pantomime of routine, with new worried glances and nightmares of our relationship being fundamentally different mixed in for variety.

After weeks of whispering to each other about plans to meet with someone so we could get this under control, we traced it back to a powerful new allergy prescription that he had started in the summer, tossed it out and tentatively smiled, hoping it was over. And somehow it is over. Mister is back to his sarcastic and quick to laugh self, while I am so thankful that we held on tight to each other and that we didn’t lose hope.

But believe me that managing Mister’s state of mind, school, blogging, and a six week guest blogging gig at the same time severely bruised me. And believe me, now that this burden has passed, finding comfort and fun in day to day normalcy hasn’t been normal at all, it’s been an amazing blessing.

We have been running out for good cheap food at local cafes on my study breaks and being luxurious, climbing into bed at nine and heading off against each other on Mister’s old GameCube. We’ve been watching heaps of our favourite TV shows, planning out the American road trips we want to take over the next few years. We’ve been biting our nails over playoff football and getting ready to celebrate our anniversary on February 1st- five years together, four years since we got our first place, one year and almost a half since we were married.

I met Mister when I was nineteen. I was a mess, fresh out of a destructive relationship that ended with me having to involve the police, living at home in a crowded house as my mom’s second marriage was falling apart, with some of the best people I knew in the clutches of terrible addiction. I had an anxiety disorder that was completely out of control, and was barely holding myself together. I didn’t believe in marriage, and I didn’t really believe other people had the power to do anything other than hurt me, so I walled everyone out.

But Mister loved me for who I was, not because it was convenient, and once I believed him I started to get better. Last semester was scary, but it gave me a chance to repay that favour just a little bit, and for that I am truly grateful.

So this semester, there will be no half measures when it comes to my staying focused on slowing down to enjoy this beautiful, simple life that we have. I didn’t get much of a normal life as a kid or a teenager, but while it might not seem that extraordinary, my life with Mister is more full than I could have ever hoped for back then. For me, every moment of our lives is something out of a story book that I read over and over as a child but couldn’t quite believe. Every moment is something that, if I choose to really be in it, will outweigh out the beautiful and broken places that I come from by a thousand fold. Even if we just use those moments for riding shopping carts around Safeway or playing board games.

It’s a lot easier for me to stay in the moment when I really understand what’s at stake. I am so thankful for these five years, and the hard ones that led me here so I can know how lucky I am. And I’m thankful for the hard moments we still have, because they remind me how fragile everything is, of how important it is to be kind, and of how important it is to laugh with the people we love while life lets us catch our breath.