Dear 14 year old me,

Hey. What page are you at in No One Here Gets Out Alive? Cool. Anyway. I know you’re weirded out by the idea of marriage, and have some concerns about exactly what it might entail, so now that I’ve been married for exactly one year, I thought I’d give you a rundown of how it works out for us so far:

• Number one, you get to fall asleep with a guy every night. Obviously the same guy, but that’s the charm. I know that your ultimate daydream is falling asleep in someone’s arms, candles all over the damn place, your tousled hair spread out artfully on the pillow, possibly to a loop of “I’ll Be There” by the Escape Club. It’s not like that. Sometimes one of you farts in your sleep and wakes the other one up. It’s still awesome.
• I know we currently think the ultimate in Grown Up Ladyism are those long silky nightgowns Madeleine Stowe wears in “Unlawful Entry.” Sorry, we don’t wear those. However, we do have some shorty nightgowns and they’re cute and comfy and don’t get tangled in the sheets and seem to have met with loads of approval.
• It’s okay to have a secret (or not-so-secret) panic attack when you think about marrying every boyfriend you’ll have up until [husband]. That’s good. Go with that feeling. It will steer us well.
• You don’t have to have kids! You can, if you want, or you can leave the option open for later or whatever and tell nosy people, “We’re just enjoying being married right now,” but you don’t have to if you don’t want to! 
• You also don’t have to wear a big white dress, drive a carpool, join the PTA, join a country club, attend charity fashion shows, have a diamond ring, get a weekly coral manicure, or marry a lawyer named Brad, which seem like the gamut of options synonymous with marriage available to you in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1991. There’s a whole other world — several of them, in fact — populated with other people and you will find them.
• Perk: you are good at being married. That probably sounds sort of Hallmarky and participant-ribbon, but it’s important. I hate to break it to you, but we don’t really grow up to have a lot of strong skills. It’s nice to have excellent handwriting, a good memory, and lightning-fast celebrity voiceover recognition, but they aren’t really money magnets. But we are very good at being married (at least so far) (to the guy we end up marrying).
• Also: guy we end up marrying is totally hot.
• I love my husband more than anything on the planet, even whenever Led Zeppelin comes on and he asks, “Who’s this again?” and the ghost of you appears over his shoulder and glares at me. But it’s cool, because he knows all the horrible things about us and actually finds some of them attractive.
• No, seriously. I know.
• So far, our marriage is equal parts “cocktail hour before dinner” and “let’s build a sofa fort and stay in it all weekend.” Of course there’s also stuff like laundry and bills and endless green card paperwork, but basically, you get to wake up every single day with your very favorite person. It’s great. You will love it.

Love,

34 year old you