Three Months and Staying...

It's been nearly two months since I last blogged. I can hardly believe it. So much has happened since the middle of September and I could have easily written dozens of blog entries. My reasons for not writing were never a case of "Oh, there's nothing to write about." Not writing in my blog became a case of my life becoming intertwined with someone else's life and figuring out how to tell a story while also respecting someone else's privacy. It was a matter of figuring out how to transform a story about two people falling in love and coming together into a story of an American woman living in Germany which is, ironically, the title of this blog. It became a battle of "do I give up the writing I love because it's not quite turning out the way I planned?" or "do I give up the plan because I want to continue the writing I love?"

Though it took me nearly two months to work through the inner turmoil and mental tug-of-war, my conclusion has been that sometimes you have to let go of "The Plan" and go with the flow. Each one of us has a story to tell. Like "The Plan", our stories change as our lives move full-speed ahead, screech to a grinding halt or suddenly take a sharp turn when we intended to just keep going straight. The blog I write may not turn out to be what I had mapped out in my mind this past July before I came to Germany, but it will continue to be my story with all it's twists, turns, ups and downs.

In five more days, I will be here for three months. It is hard for me to imagine my life without Mario in it. Sometimes I have a bad day and sometimes he has a bad day. Sometimes we have bad days together. Mostly, we have a lot of good days. But all the days, even the difficult ones, are days where I know he loves me and he knows I love him. We laugh together and we value the time we have together. We are learning how to live with one another and how to be better people because of each other. Regardless of how perfect or imperfect the week has been, at the end of the week Mario always asks "Do you want to stay for one week more?" and I smile and pause like I'm thinking about it, then I say "Okay, yes...one more week."

And, from here, my story continues...