Dave and I were talking today about how we’ve gone through so many changes in the last 2 years. First we got engaged, then we got married, and this year we’re having a baby. A baby! Imagine all these changes. I’ve truly become domesticated. It’s rather amusing, though expected, and I’m not surprised at finding myself easily adjusted to the homebody lifestyle, being a wife, a mother, a worker bee of the working poor. While all this may seem scary to other people my age, I find it comforting to have such a predictable lifestyle, able to get what I expect: a loving husband in a loving home with a loving surrounding of family and friends. I can’t stress enough how easy it has become to be happy. This is why they call it “the easy life.” When you find happiness, it simply just “is.” It becomes daily routine to be happy. I like it.

I joke around with my friends these days about how “excitement” is defined in such a different way in my life now. For example, I get all excited when our windows and stairs are washed and cleaned. I am forever ecstatic when laundry is done and our sheets and blankets are washed (I just loooove the feeling of going to bed to clean, fresh sheets and blankets). I get a great kick of adrenaline through my blood system shopping for our next foam mattress. Getting a good night’s sleep is simply the next stage of bliss for me. Like I said, it becomes “easy” when you’re happy. Every little thing, every simple little thing, is a blessing.

I think, though, I’ve always been a little “different” from other folks my age. I’ve always enjoyed the quieter lifestyle. In college, while all my colleagues and even my roomate wanted to go out and have fun, dressing up in tight low-cleavage clothing and clubbing it out, I found true solace cuddled up in bed with a good book. When my peers around me were getting high and experimenting with sex and boys, I was designing websites and becoming part of the internet’s first round of true “bloggers” (you know, before livejournal, vox, wordpress, and movabletype even existed — when websites were coded by hand and entries were purely coded by html in notepad). While girls my age were busy trying to get a grip on why their boyfriends were cheating on them and whether or not they should cheat back as revenge, I was sending love letters and receiving them back to my future husband. I was taking photographs and learning how to edit them in Photoshop. I was writing poetry and drawing. I think, I’ve always been a little different.

Way back when, before I knew my life was my life and it was “normal” regardless of how I lived it, I wondered why I was different and whether or not I should be part of the grain. Why wasn’t I into the stuff that other girls my age were into? Depression became the name of the game, suicide was a bit of a fun past-time hobby of fantasy-making. It wasn’t until the realization finally kicked in that I am allowed to be who I am, without remorse, without regret, whether or not it’s “different” or the “same” as everyone else’s, that I was able to relax and really just live.

Life is simpler when you’re just yourself. Life is happy when you accept that simplicity.