It's finally over.

Today, after a vague mention by my mother, I realized that I no longer feel anything toward my ex. I don't have the tug in my heart or the ball in my stomach when I think of him or something reminds me of the past. The most I feel is curiosity.

I don't feel the need to ever be friends with him, but I still wonder occasionally how his life is going. I no longer harbor any resentment or strong feelings. Time heals all they say, and it's faded into nothing.

I actually feel quite liberated after realizing this. I hadn't given it much thought lately, with so much going on in my life this month. Looking back now I think the whole thing may have crossed my mind barely twice in the past while.

I'm wondering if this has correlates in any way to the hints my boyfriend has been throwing toward our future. I've been questioned a handful of times in the past couple months on whether I intend to marry him, and am wondering if his family has been tossing the same questions at him as well. I tend to change the subject when the topic comes up, but actually had a great conversation about it with my future sister-in-law a month ago.

She admitted that she always wonders if he only proposed because he was afraid no one else would come along after her. They were engaged after dating for 3 months. They were married soon after. They are now pregnant, and I will be welcoming my niece Addison next month. She admitted her insecurities to me, and I did to her. And after talking through the whole thing, I know that I will most likely, one day be a Sawatzky. I am in no hurry, and I am hoping he is not either. We are both in debt at the moment, and need to be financially stable, which will probably take a few good years. And by that time, I may actually be ready for a more permanent commitment. Our relationship is quite opposite to his brother's. They moved very quickly, and now own a townhouse, new cars, and are having a baby, and have only been together a year longer than my boyfriend and I. We took a long time to get serious, and worked through a lot of issues before finally deciding that, yes, this was all worth it. By this time, I honestly don't think anything about him could surprise me. I know him so well. I know all of the things that annoy me about him, and have developed ways to deal with them.

I think by the time he and I are ready to tie the knot, we will actually have a better foundation than some couples, simply because we have learned to deal with our issues together. We're already basically family. He's spent more time at my parents house than I have in the past year. He and my brother are nearly inseparable despite the 7 year age difference. His mother relies on me to keep things running smoothly with his family, and his sister and I have grown much closer through her pregnancy (partially because I cannot be pregnant, so have to live vicariously through her). I feel very at ease with his family, as he does with mine. It all just feels so natural.

Huh, I guess I went off on a bit of a tangent there. My mind has been so full of everything lately it was nice to sit down and focus on one subject.

After my epiphany today I don't expect to spend much time on this account. This may be my last entry, but I feel it's a good enough message to be my last one.

One of my closest friends from high school just had a baby. She and her fiance were the people my ex and I hung out with together most often.

Usually I'm not excited when people my age have babies, but they have been together for over 4 years, are engaged, and make a ton of money. They own their own house, have 2 new cars, and have a beautiful nursery set up. They may be young but in their case I don't think having a baby young was a terrible idea.

If my ex and I were still together, if would be 4 years for us as well. If I had chosen not to move out here, we would probably be living together in an apartment in the same city, working at McDonalds and Extra Foods. He would have given me the promise ring like he intended, he would have proposed, and we would probably either be married or plan on getting married. And to be honest, we would probably have a baby or have one in the next few years. It would not be a perfect life by far, but it would have seemed perfect to me. I would have been happy in my little bubble not knowing any better.

And in comparing that to what my life is now, I wonder if the little bubble would have been better. I might have been happy forever in my ignorance.

But now, I know better. I know that I am capable and worth more than that. I will not base my life around a man. I am 20. I have much learning to do before I start caring about having a family.

I love my boyfriend dearly, and I hope to be with him forever, but I don't expect it. He is not nearly as ambitious as me, and I am not sure that he will be able to sit back and let me grow into a better person without concern for him. The negativity in me says that I won't be able to move forward in life if he's there, and dare I say, holding me back. But I choose to hope. I am not one to fantasize about a dream life, but I do try sometimes to picture the future. I try, and I can't really do it.

The future I choose to see is one he probably doesn't even want. I want to move to a big city and work as a zookeeper. He would prefer to live in his little bubble in his house with his Xbox 360 in the tiny town he grew up in, and he would gladly live out the rest of his life in that one town. I can't do that. I cannot spend more than 6 years in one place. By 3 years I am getting antsy and ready to move. I need change, growth, new experiences.

We have talked about getting married. Jokingly on his part I think. I told him my idea about a wedding and he agrees. We both absolutely HATE the stuffy traditional wedding stuff. I explained to him how I would use all the money people usually spend on dresses, tuxes, flowers, and other meaningless things, and spend it all on a 2 week long celebration in Greece. There would be tons of food, booze, music, and friends every day. And one day in the middle we'd have a short ceremony on the beach. I've envisioned wearing a white bikini, and after the technical and legal stuff was through, we would all go swimming in the Mediterranean Ocean. I want my wedding to be about friends and family, not just about me. And he enjoys that. He's joked about his father wearing that disgusting old grey wifebeater with the holes in the shoulder to our wedding. I told him as long as he can convince his dad to come I don't care what he wears.

He also agrees with adoption. Which is huge for me. Not being able to safely carry a pregnancy with my spine means my man needs to be on board with adoption. We've talked about it many times, and he's fine with the idea. I've told him that I want a boy, then a girl. I've told him that I want a girl from China or Japan, and that if we end up together he can pick the nationality of the boy.

Beyond that, I mean, who really cares about the details? I love him, and he loves me. Life with him would never be dull. Even stuck in that pitiful little town, his parents seem to have fun every day. I hope that when I have been married for that long I still find my husband funny. One can only hope, and that's what I'm doing.