You feel, all being well, that you are a whole person. Every day, you know who you are and what you want. How your career should look, what it is you believe in, whether you take sugar in your tea. Every day you know these things about yourself.
But. You look back on your photos and laugh at your outfit choices. You mourn the time wasted in shitty jobs. You replay a moment of cruelty from years ago before you fall asleep. Every day, you recognise that who you are today is not completely you. You have an ambition to one day wipe from your memory those bad punchlines, that fringe. But then, they were part of you.
When Jonathan asked me to marry him, I said yes. I said yes to him, right away. In fact, I think I said yes before he had actually managed to get all four words out. It is the single greatest yes I have ever said.
I did not pause to ask the previous versions of myself. I did not ask 2008 Farrah if it was okay to give up on the dream of marrying Jude Law. I did not ask 2011 Farrah if it was okay to rescind on those pub-fuelled declarations of staying single as a feminist martyr. I did not ask earlier-that-day Farrah who scowled when Jonathan shook me awake too early. I did not ask. I just said yes.
In the month since the best yes of my life, I have spoken with 2008 Farrah to explain that Jude Law was always unrealistic, and that the film Alfie was fictional anyways. I have spoken to 2011 Farrah, and explained that when I said those gaudy words I was a) drunk and b) a dickhead. I have spoken to scowling morning-of-the-engagement-Farrah, but she still isn’t convinced. I’ll work on her.
I was wholly me when I said yes. The me’s before that yes were all part of my character development, culminating in a woman who would one day say yes to the man kneeling before her one August morning. The most wholly me thing I have ever done is agree to marry Jonathan, and I suspect the most wholly him thing he has done is ask me. Those versions of me met all the versions of him and agreed, wickedly, to be the texture we bring to the next chapter. To be the colour on the walls of the new hallways that stretch before us both.
The Jonathan and Farrah who kissed on Cleeve Hill will now watch how the future versions of us unfold, entwined.
and if you think this post is self indulgent nonsense, you should have seen version one.
