Happiness is...

So I got engaged.

Wait, I'm going to write that one more time.. SO I GOT ENGAGED. In. Real. Life.

Omg, it looks all the more absurd in writing. It is 0617 in the morning and I can't go back to sleep to save my life.

If you want to read about the actual proposal, please skip by clicking here, because a lengthy rant of "how the fuck did you get engaged after less than a month" is to follow first.

I had a strange evening on Wednesday. Our Best Mutual Friend rang up and wanted to have a few beers in the evening. I invited him over. It just so happens he is also best friends with my First Proper Boyfriend, whom I was with when I was 15. Or at least they used to be, they are not as close anymore. FPB has actually finally managed to leave town at the age of thirtysomething, and I guess he has found that he in fact misses BMF, because he also wanted to come along. So did my brother.

Before the guests arrive, as I'm showering, I notice that my breasts are slightly swollen and sore. This is weird, as I have about two periods per year, and the last one was about three weeks ago. I say to GM that I could be pregnant. We google "early signs of pregnancy". We are happy. However, I find this thought too unreal to keep me from drinking. Poor lump of cells that might be down there.

So I am sitting in the beautifully refurbished kitchen of GM (though I guess now I should say "our" kitchen) with these four men: My brother, my lover, my first boyfriend and the man who introduced me to both the latter.

There were beers. There was cheap white wine from FPB, which was so sweet and nasty I had to help him drink it in exhange for a few G&Ts.

Whenever I drink with BMF, I get totally pissed. The last time we did this, in this house in fact, I had a whole bottle of wine to myself plus an unknown number of drinks. I was still trying to be with someone else. But it was here, surrounded by these people, that I had one of the best evenings I'd had in months.

BMF is barely allowed by his wife to go out with me, because one drink tends to turn into several, and we once went out for "one beer" and stayed there until 0400 in the morning when the bar closed.

The weird thing is, when we are together, I never feel drunk. I have known him since we were 10, and he knows everything there is to know about me, which is why I think I never notice that slippery slope from talking about work to talking about your sex life in disturbingly candid detail.

So we sit, we drink, and strangely life seems to have come full circle. BMF approves of me and GM, though he thinks it's weird, but he says, in fact, why should we not be together? He has a lengthy rant about how he thinks GM is smarter than me (in a conventional sense this is clearly bullshit, but no doubt GM would make a far better shrink than I'll ever be once I finish my studies).

FPB and I have a Spotify Battle all evening where FPB interrupts about 4 out of 5 songs I try to play and puts on old music that reminds me of being 15, holding hands, snogging in his basement and spending hours playing video games. Not much different than what I do these days, in fact.

I love FPB. He was an excellent first boyfriend, and since taught me the number one important rule of getting over boys: If they don't want you, they are either stupid or gay. So you probably shouldn't go for them anyway. This was, of course, long before I was with my gay ex and eliminated one of those options. These days I think whomever doesn't want me must simply be stupid. He looks into my heart, straight into it, still. I sort of wish I could have asked him what he thinks of this new relationship, but maybe I will never know. Maybe it's time to make my own decisions.

The evening rolled on. Much important stuff was talked about across the table, most of which doesn't actually matter anymore. But it was important at the time. I sat next to GM, we kissed, we held hands. We behaved. There was no public groping.

I belong with him now. I guess it was a coming out of the closet sort of event. We are now a unit. My closest friends have seen it. I spent the last half hour fashioning rings from beercan ringpulls with a Leatherman, which was no easy task, though I am somewhat unsure of whether this was due to the levels of alcohol in my blood or to the task being impossible to begin with.

Brother had to go home to his wife and kid, FPB and BMF decided to get a cab into town (which is like a 5 minute walk but as I said, there was quite a lot of drinking). I emphasised to GM that if he wanted to go with them, which under normal circumstances I'm sure he would have, I didn't mind, but I personally was fully ready to hit the sack. He insisted on staying home with me, though I think he appreciated the sentiment.

After they had left, about 130 in the morning, I sat on GMs lap in the kitchen, and though part of me wishes I remembered more about what we talked about, I know the central points were such:

• We love each other.
• We want to get married.
• The proposal GM had secretly planned in his head involved whisking me away for a weekend in about six months time, proposing in front of some embassy where he had also secretly booked a slot for us to get married.
• GM has been waiting because it is so soon, and the rest of the world cares about those things.
• GM is slightly drunk (though he insists now that the moment was so sobering he felt sober, he clearly wasn't) and decides he doesn't give a shit what the rest of the world thinks.
• We have never been better than with each other.
• It becomes clear that my passport is not in town, so there will be now impulse-travelling to a romantic location this weekend.
• GM says that this is just as well, as instead, my father will be incredibly proud to walk me down the aisle, my best friend will cry because she's my maid of honor, and my mother will shed tears of joy in the church of my choice.
• Did I mention we love each other?

There was other talk too, kissing, hugging, which escapes me now. He, who never cries, is tearing up, I can see it. We feel emotional. We hug more. Then, GM lifts me up from the chair, and I assume he wants to carry me off to bed, which he does like five times a day (yes, five.. It's nuts, like being 21 again, or possibly even younger, when men had stamina and you thought maybe sex would run out once it was legal).

But he puts me down on the kitchen floor in front of the IKEA fridge with the ice cube dispenser, kneels down closely in front of me, takes my hand and says something I also can't quite remember, but which went along the lines of "I love you. Being with you is so good, I've never had it better. You are the most amazing girlfriend. I want to share the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?"

I completely lose my faculty of speech, which, if you knew me, is pretty rare. Had I been completely sober, I would probably have cried. GM reports later that I looked clearly emotional. I hug him, I kiss his forehead. I manage to say yes, yes, yes, of course I will marry you.

There is more talking, though the only thing I can really remember is that he says we should go look at rings in the morning, and I can have what ever I want. And GM says he also thought that if I really am pregnant, he wanted me to know that he really wants us to be together forever, for me, for us, not just because we are having a baby. This brings me close to tears. He has a last cigarette and we have a pint of water (with ice from the ice dispenser) each. We brush our teeth, I am too dazed to notice that we don't clear the table, which I usually always do after a long evening, somehow we make it to the bedroom. We have sex, we fall asleep.

When I wake, early in the morning, I have no hangover, just a dull sensation that quite a lot of alcohol must have been consumed the evening before. I turn around in bed, and the man I love is there. He will be there, in person or in spirit, every time I wake for the rest of my life. It is an incredibly peaceful feeling to have.

I feel a little anxious that he will regret having popped the question after quite a few drinks, considering he had such grand plans. I feel a little disappointed that I can only remember bits of our pre- and post-proposal conversiation, because it felt important there and then. Though I suspect he remembers his proposal, it was rehearsed in his head over and over before he carried through with it, so even if he was drunk, which of course now he claims he wasn't, he will remember. Maybe one day I will ask.

Then GM wakes too, calls me his fiancee and says he loves me. We want to go into town for rings, but have to make love three times and have breakfast inbetween before we manage to get going. I have no regrets. Maybe he will carry my regrets for the rest of my life, as he does already. I feel lighter.

So we are now engaged. And I have never had it better, either.