You're 24??! You're MARRIED? YOU'RE MOVING ABROAD!?! (Part 1 of many, I am sure).

A week ago, at this exact moment, I finished up my interview with the company I wanted to teach for in China. I was trying to figure out how to get to Tucker, who was across town, and the struggle was real. His team  having their annual team dinner at what looked like a delicious Greek restaurant. I am not big on cabs, too expensive, so I just opted to stay in our hotel until they returned.

When Tucker came back to our little hotel nest he was definitely a little tipsy. And Tipsy Tucker is the best Tucker. A waiter had confused "iced tea" for "long island iced tea" and Tucker was handed the mistakes. Yes, plural. At the game the following morning the parents fawned over the persistence of Hubs at the restaurant. Apparently Tucker was going to stop at nothing to make sure I got to experience the fabulous Greek food like he did. In reality, he knows how hangry I get and did not want to feel the wrath of hangry Jessie come down upon him that night.

He is seriously the absolute greatest.

Four hours later, from this moment a week ago,  I was offered a position teaching in China. And I took it. Immediately. Lord knows that if I gave myself more than thirty-seconds to think about it I would've rejected the offer. I mean, I took it immediately after I realized the email was sent directly to my junk mail folder. Gmail freaked out and didn't recognize the address of the HR woman that sent me the position. This caused minor confusions when the recruiter congratulated me in an obligatory 'welcome aboard' email that was answered with minor confusion (and a lot of happiness) on my end.

My week since accepting the position has been full of, "Oh my gosh! China is SO far!" and "That's amazing! Do it while you're young!" and a little, " I could never do that" which I call total B.S. on. You can do it, you just don't want to do it.

Among all of these questions, and my personal favorite, "What about your husband?" What about my husband? He has a name, you know. It's Tucker. What about Tucker?

Well guess what?
We will still be married.
We will be completely in love.
We will obsess over each other.
We will talk at every chance, just like we do right now.
We will tell each other the mundane play-by-play of our day.
We will grow in our marriage. Probably more than we ever have previously.
We will always have each other to lean on when times get rough.
We will still be together.
I will just live really, really far away for roughly fourteen months.

We chose to share our lives at a young age and we get that. We got that a long time ago... Like nearly three years ago when we tied the knot. What we didn't choose to do was to quit our dreams simply because we got married. Newsflash: we don't live in 1950 any more. You can still be married and live your life. Even if that life takes you in a direction you never thought you'd go, you can still be married!  No longer is it about being adhering to the societal norm of "marriage" to Tucker or I. To us, it is about being happy. It's about looking at our life 60 years from now and being proud of our accomplishments both as a couple and as individuals. We are still individual people. We still have individual aspirations. We both still have places we want to go and people we want to see. None of that disappeared when we paid $66 to the state of Oregon and signed a piece of paper that legally (and symbolically) glued our lives together. None of it.

We get one shot at this life thing. We plan on making our shot the best it can be. Even if that shot means having to spend time a world away to follow our dreams.