A single carrot

"We are not yet getting married." This has been the perennial answer we have been giving to the perennial question we have been getting these days. It doesn't help that we both turned 29 this year and have been going steady for a little over 8 years. It is further aggravated by the fact that our usual weekend activity how consists of attending weddings, baptisms and birthday parties of our friends' kids. It was inevitable. There was simply no way we can avoid answering that all-too-familar question--are we getting married?

Marvin and I practically grew up together. A common friend introduced us when we were barely 16. He was my prom date and I was his. We immediately hit it off as friends throughout college and after 4 years of unrelenting courtship, I finally said yes just before graduation.

We've known each other for more than a decade. I know he's a man of integrity and he sees me as a fighter. I usually speak my mind out while he listens and he usually cooks while I watch. Our taste for food, music and films are not so far apart that deciding on what to do on a typical Friday night was never a big issue.

We may spend another decade of blissful togetherness trying to find the right answer to that badgering query but against the more accepted norms of dating and long-term relationships now, we have decided to instead spend our precious time looking for the right questions to ask.

Why should we get married? Why not now, tomorrow or the next year? We have seen people getting married for all the wrong reasons as well as people taking their vows despite the less-than-ideal set-ups. But we have our personal reasons for not yet getting married (and not living together, too) and we are careful not to turn those reasons into excuses.

For after spending almost half of our lives together, going through the different joys, pains and mistakes of being part of someone else's life, all we feel now is gratitude that we are able to share this not-so-perfect life with the one perfect person.

And so, who knows, we just might get married after writing about this. Until that time comes though, we have decided to offer no excuse for our current, chosen state of singleness.

Carrot's a green apple

There's always a first time and this is my first blog. I don't normally share my thoughts, musings or whatever you call it for the whole world to either critique or praise but I do love the fact that a single word, a simple sentence, a typical blog like this has the power to touch, inspire, change or just affect another soul.

We used to call this journals or diaries--a record or collection of experiences and learnings that sum up our life. Now, it's a blog and as expected, I am again trying to start one. Yes, that's right. I'm a green apple. And at 29, please pardon my unabashed way of saying that. But at this point in my life it takes so much effort to pretend so i figured why not just be true to myself.

I loved writing. I spent 3 years in high school discovering it, four years in college learning it, 5 years at work practicing it and then I just stopped. Somewhere between paying the bills and getting fat, I just stopped. And so after 3 long and dry years, I dare to go back. I dare to rekindle my long forgotten romance with the pen--let me continue to use that metaphor as romancing the keyboard does not quite capture the sentiment.

The problem with green apples--they write or come up with an idea and they immediately think it's new, that it's original. So I ask for your indulgence. Cut me some slack, please. I am relearning and unlearning. We are all green apples anyway--may it be in writing blogs, learning a new language, starting a new hobby or building careers in a new industry--at one point in our lives, we all have been or shall be labeled as such.

It's a good thing though that I'm not just a green apple. I'm also a carrot--and you know what they say about carrots? They're best eaten raw. This is my first blog and you're free to have a bite.