So, today I thought about getting excited…or rather being allowed to or not.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I am quite excitable – this is a big reason I don’t drink much anymore, because as you can see from the photos below, an excitable Ali with just two vodkas is quite a scary mix.
Anyway, in my sober everyday life, my excitable nature is generally quite a positive thing. For example, everyday when I wake up in the morning I think of one thing I’m excited about that day, this can be anything from going for a walk with my sister or watching the new episode of Line of Duty. It sounds silly, but just having these little things help me jump out of bed and put a smile on my face.
However, as I’ve got older, I feel like we are encouraged not to get excited, because we are told then if the thing we are excited about doesn’t happen, we will be more disappointed.
I noticed this a lot when Stu and I started looking for our first home together. Now, anyone who has bought a house before will understand this is one of the most stressful things you can do. Despite knowing this, when Stu and I put our first offer in on a house, we got very excited.
From the second we heard our offer got accepted, we were discussing what we were going to do with the garden, picking out furniture for the lounge and organising the moving in party. Unfortunately, just a few weeks into the process, our house dreams came crumbling down as we had to pull out. If you want to hear the exact reasons why, you can read the full story here, but basically the house wasn’t good.
Once we got over house number one, our excitement began to build again, as Stu found us house number two. Again we got so excited as we envisioned our lives in this new home together and our luck had changed.
Sadly, this time much further down the process, our luck ran out as we had to pull out again (again full details why here.) It was at this point, the excitement of moving house had definitely worn out. This in mind, when we found house number three, which we loved a million times more than houses number one and two, we were too scared to let ourselves get excited, in case we had to pull out again.
Looking back with the benefit of house hindsight, I can see this wasn’t a very logical way of thinking. This is because while we were really sad the first two times our houses fell through, I don’t think we would have been any less sad if we hadn’t got excited. We just wouldn’t have had the joy we had when we first got excited, so it would have been a double blow.
I’ve felt similar to this when we’ve been organising our wedding. When Stu first proposed, all those many years ago in the Pre Covid world, I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited (which as I said is saying a lot for someone who gets excited at least once a day!) But again, as anyone who has read my blog before will know, this excitement soon passed as our dream wedding slipped through our fingers thanks to that virus we won’t speak of.
We did manage to get some excitement back when we reorganised for wedding number two. However, as the date got closer and the reality of what a covid wedding was going to be like, with no reception, no first dance and most importantly so few friends and family, we found it hard it to look forward to what was meant to be the most important day of our lives.
As a result, when there was a glimmer of hope that things could be normal from the 21st June, we decided to give our dream wedding one last shot with a third and final new date. And while we have definitely both felt more positive about the wedding, we do both find ourselves saying “oh we can’t get too excited in case it gets cancelled again.”
That was until today, when on a walk with friends, we randomly ended up going past the cathedral we are getting married in and they asked if they could have a look inside.
This was the first time Stuart and I had been in the cathedral since we set date number three and simply seeing the aisle, the beautiful stain glass windows and just being in the place we are going to get married, all the excitement came rushing back.
Filled with this excitement, I’m going to hold on to it and not tell myself I shouldn’t look forward to our new August date. I don’t know if the virus we don’t speak of will ruin our plans again or not. But I do know feeling negative about the most exciting days of my life is stupid so I might as well be excited and what will be will be.
alanaburnett 