My 476th Journal Entry

Hi, Journal!

The 176th thing I love about my boyfriend is that he doesn't think there's such a thing as growing up. Meaning, you're not going along being not-a-grownup and then there's a switch and you're a grownup. I really think it's kind of weird that people imagine that's how it works, like, kid, kid, kid, kid, grownup. But he still likes to do a lot of the things he did when he was a kid, and also, when he was a kid he was very rational and responsible like most grownups supposedly are but actually a lot of them aren't. So the older he's gotten, the more he's basically just learned how different stuff works, which means he can deal with stuff he couldn't have when he was younger. But also one of the ways almost all stuff works is that there's way more about it you don't know than you do know. So if you're bothering to keep paying attention and learning, you don't really stop "growing up" (if that's what you want to call it). And if you're replacing stuff that brings you joy with stuff that doesn't bring you joy, that's not growing up at all ... it's just learning some really wrong lesson.

Whenever I talk to him about this kind of thing, he makes me feel like it's okay that there's a ton of stuff I don't know and things I have silly ideas about because I haven't experience them much or at all. He says we're on a journey. And he wants to see where our journey takes us and where my journey takes me.

But he doesn't want it to take us someplace where I'm always all serious about everything and I never do or say goofy things about stuff I don't know anything about. He told me, "Aers, the wonderful thing about you is that every time you open your eyes, you open them a little wider -- because you see more, but also because the new things you see amaze you. A lot of people would call that naive or childish, and that's a big part of what's wrong with those people. They can't appreciate someone who allows the world to constantly dawn upon her and surprise her. They think a person like that needs to grow up. But that's fossilized thinking, the thinking of people who are stuck. Don't ever let them get you stuck in the same place. You deserve so much more than that."

Probably ... I should have been writing more things I love about my boyfriend that are like this one and not so many short silly ones like I've been doing this whole time, right? If I can write this kind of thing here and now, shouldn't I be writing it a lot more? Except that's exactly what he means by people getting stuck. The little short silly things I love about him are me with my eyes wide open, always seeing and being amazed by this wonderful person who cares about me. And every one of them is something great I've learned by knowing him.

I'm just so, so, so, so lucky, you know?

Love you, Journal!