Where the end is a beginning
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, if I tried to imply that there isn’t a pit in my stomach the size of a canteloupe. It’s there. I feel it. It’s real. I know it.
In one sense it’s like the night before a wedding. You’ve made arrangements, invited guests, professed your love, rehearsed and eaten, laughed into the night with friends and loved ones that have come from miles away. But as you lay yourself down to sleepâ€â€unless you’re much braver and more prescient than Iâ€â€you still wonder at what it is you’re getting yourself into. Tomorrow is real. It’s intended to be forever. But you have no clear window into what that forever holds. It’s a complete mystery, with no guaranteed outcomes. There’s work and hope and sweat and love and the starry-eyed promise of what that combination can bring if you stick it out through the good and the bad.
Designing a house is a lot like a courtship. You dream and plan and think about it night and day. Every other house you look at is brought to bear against the one you plan to build. There is passion for each idea you have. There are epiphanies and disappointments. There are days, weeks, and months where every magazine and book you read and movie or TV show you see is a place to pick up new ideas. The way the sun shines through the leaves makes you wonder how it will look shining through the windows in your den. Every drop of rain you hear falling makes you wonder how it will sound as you lie listening in your bed. Every breath, every thought, every dream, every thing you do is surrounded and filled by the little universe you are creating. It is part of who you are.
But even though you’ve invested so much time and so much energy and so much money and given yourself so completely to this house, your mind still tracks to other places. There are other houses, many as beautiful as the one you plan to build and many more that were designed to steal your breath away. Others on properties yet unseen that promise a natural beauty so perfect that’d you’d never want to leave. And none of which require any toil or sweat.
We have designed a beautiful house. A house that, even on paper, makes me yearn for it to be built. So this pit I feel is not indecision. It’s not remorse at having been brought to some place I don’t truly want to be. It’s simply the wide-eyed realization that we are embarking on something dangerously beautiful. That’s a reality. One that still has me staring at the ceiling when I should be fast asleep, but my sleeplessness does not betray regret.
Monday is our wedding day. Once Monday comes there is no turning back. On Monday the house we could run to if we decided to change our minds will be nothing more than a hole in the ground. We will have reached a point of no return. This is what we’ve been aiming for since the day we began to make these plans.
Am I scared?
You bet.
But I am not afraid.