Trying

It's 2 AM and I'm still awake. That was once more or less the norm, but it's really unusual for me these days. Originally I was awake because I was finishing up a school project, but that has been completed for about an hour now and I still don't feel like I can sleep. Penn got some bad news tonight concerning a relative, and since it's about his family and since it doesn't really involve me at all rather than very tangentially I'm not going to write about it in detail here, but it's keeping me up because it's a sucky situation on many levels and I can't seem to stop my brain from running through all the potential outcomes. I'm hopeful that this is a sucky situation that will ultimately parlay itself into a vastly better situation for the person involved, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a sucky situation at the moment. Sorry for the vagueness. It's weird, this feeling of growing into someone else's family. Because it's still so easy to think of my in-laws-to-be as "his" family. I even said "his family" a few sentences ago. But then certain things happen once in a while that make me realize it's actually going to be "our" family soon and I have to embrace the good parts of that as well as the parts that are hard. Tonight definitely counts as a hard part, and I'm sure it won't be the last time one of his family members has a problem we choose to help deal with, and there's no doubt in my mind my family will throw some drama our way, too, one of these days. Families are good at that sort of thing.

It's a fine balancing act, doing what Penn and I are doing: creating a new family. I like to think of Penn and myself as pretty insular. That's not to say that I want either of us to be cut off from the families that raised us, because that's certainly not the case. There are enormous emotional benefits to having the supportive extended families we both have, and I'd never want to lose those. But I also like the idea that he and I are a unit and everyone else is related to us, but just that--related. Not exactly central to how he and I function. We are the unit, we might eventually (hopefully) make children to temporarily add to that unit until they are grown and head off to make their own units, but everyone else isn't integral to my relationship with Penn. At the same time, though, we have to figure out how to create our new family without harming or rejecting the way things were in the past. Sometimes it's as simple as deciding what family traditions we'll carry on. Other times it's more complicated, like deciding what help we are willing to accept (or offer) or how to delicately handle particular events so that they do not end up blowing up in our faces years down the line.
This is just another thing my mind has played with as I've been preparing to get married. Getting married--vowing to privilege your spouse over all other connections--does ultimately change those prior connections to family members, whether they were good or bad or somewhere in between. And some of the changes are great and some of them are difficult. I think people in general maybe aren't mindful enough of how a marriage changes things not just for the couple, but for the entire family. I'm trying to remember that, as I go along.
I have faith that Penn and I will create a wonderful new family when we tie the knot in January. Today (well, yesterday, technically) marks the two year anniversary of the day that he formally asked me to be his girlfriend. As with all things time-related, it simultaneously feels like two whole years can't possibly have gone by already and like Penn has been my partner for my entire life, or at least far longer than two years. Nights like tonight, when things are worrisome, just remind me how lucky I am to have someone who listens to me, who comforts me, who values my thoughts even when he adamantly disagrees, who trusts me enough to let me offer opinions about people he has known far, far longer than I have, and who trusts me enough to let me into his mind. We have a true partnership, and sometimes it's so incredibly easy to really see that and be grateful.