Dear Ira,

Certain things happened this year that made me doubt everything I had ever believed in. I never really talked about it, either.

I asked my fiance if maybe we are just swimming upstream by trying this whole marriage thing. See, in 2009, I found out that a lot of people I know (almost all of them, really) are in unhappy marriages and/or are unfaithful.

I found this out at the wake of a good friend of mine, which, and I mean this, is not a good place to find out any life-changing events.

Ira, if you ever feel the need to tell someone something that they might deem life-changing, make sure there isn’t a 21 gun salute going off at the time.

Anyway, on the ride home from the wake, I asked my fiance if maybe we were the weird ones because we are happy and faithful, and not unrealistic in our expectations of each other and life. He was insulted that I phrased it “swimming upstream,” and rightly so.

I started bargaining - maybe we shouldn’t get married, can we just have a child? Why do your family and my family need to mix and mingle. It felt like someone was asking me to contaminate a bag of plasma. It felt like marriage ruined all the people around us, turning them into hurtful bags of useless waste. So let’s skip that ‘marriage’ part, let’s just skip spending all that money on one night, let’s skip the whole drama of it, and let’s just get to the happily-ever-after-family part.

My fiance said no, not so succinctly, and not so coldly, but essentially, he said no.

In the end, I am glad he said no. It caused us to make a plan for what we were going to do. I have to tell you Ira, the plans we made, they’re not only attainable, but they make me feel excited and my heart race.

I haven’t felt that way all year.

When 2010 comes, I am going to watch the sun rise, and I am going to start the year off on a positive note. I am going to go back to updating this with a positive message. I am going to look excitedly to the future. But none of that positive outlook is going to change the fact that, for me, 2009 is the year that people lost their common human decency.

Sincerely,

Enna