Story: "48 days"

"48 Days"

When you grow your hair out there’s a point where your hair hits a weird middle phase. You could easily just cut it and it would be back to being the short hair you loved before, or you could be patient and wait for it to grow past the awkwardness. The awkwardness I felt in life right now was not something I could so easily just cut off. I had no choice but to just wait it out. My bedroom held the crux of the matter. Where there once sat a solid full size bed frame, a twin mattress now lay on the floor in its place. My bookshelf, once full, was scattered aimlessly with knick knacks that once had a place but now felt naked without their books to compliment them. While my room could be messy at times, the amount of things that sat on the floor without homes, their systems disrupted, showed a window into my life. The things I cherished split between the two homes I loved, my life split with them. 

I opened the door to June, my yellow beetle. 48 days. My life would never be the same. As I reversed to pull out of the driveway the bittersweet reality of leaving my family’s home to start my own home with the man I loved hit me in the chest. How I longed to be with him and live in the place my things were slowly moving to, but the thought left me already missing my family back home. The months were strange now. It was a constant decision of who to spend my sparse free time with. You ended up being pulled in every direction, always missing someone. I loved my family and it wasn’t that I wanted to leave them, but I wanted to live with my man and not be in the awkwardness anymore. 

Our apartment that wasn’t ours. A house I was trying to make a home, but wasn’t mine…yet. 48 days. Where was I supposed to be? Home? Where was that anymore? What was home? My man and my things? My family and where I slept? I was ripping bandages off left and right hoping it would help the falling go faster. Two boxes of things, six, seven. If it was all in one place would it make the awkwardness go away? 

I opened the sunroof on my bug trying not to eat my hair in the wind. “Stick Season” was blaring on June’s stereo and my mind felt comforted for a second, reminiscing on all the moments with my fiance where we blasted this song on the road. 48 days. I missed my family despite the fact I had just seen them moments before. I could tell they missed me too. It would be easier one of these days, but for now living in two places at once wasn’t. My mom seemed sad that I was growing up, and I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t know what to do about the inevitable though. My hair was growing and if I didn’t cut it, it’d continue to get longer. 

My mind didn’t go much further than June 14th and the week following. 48 days. Life would be so very different, so much so I couldn’t even imagine it. In a singular moment, life would change. For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer. A life I didn’t know, suddenly mine. The back doors would open and I’d walk the aisle to my husband. A perfect picture of the Gospel message. I couldn’t help but smile at this thought. I’d wake up in the morning in our house, a lovely mixture of his and mine scattered about. We’d laugh until our bellies hurt and we’d fall on the floor in a pile of kisses. We’d tickle each other's souls till our dying breath. Every high and low would be a part of our story, and I couldn’t wait. I’d fall asleep in his arms at night, praising God for the man He’s placed beside me. I couldn’t just cut my hair short because for it to be long meant all of this and more. 

48 days. The awkward length would be gone and cascading down in its place, would be my wedding hair. Done up all pretty for the big day, every middle phase worth it for the beauty that it was.

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This was a less traditional blog post but hopefully you liked it! I won't always write an outro like this but I felt like the first one needed some kind of explanation. I love writing and oftentimes my stories are my life in story format, feelings I’m experiencing at the time, a setting I really like, or on the rare occasion something I’ve plain made up. Most of my stories are short stories meaning under 2000 words. With that being said I thought this blog would be a good place to share some of my favorite stories I've written. You’ll learn I'm not always the best at starting something and keeping it in a specific lane so with this blog you’ll probably find you get a little bit of everything. You get me; and hopefully you’ll stick around for that. 48 days was a story I wrote last year while I was preparing for my wedding. I hope you enjoyed and if you want to see more stories like this please let me know by emailing me at butatforme.j2415@gmail.com or in my Instagram comments!