I'm getting married tomorrow. And I'm having trouble describing what that means to me, minus a mixture of worn clichés. Perhaps it's because the act of getting married is a cliché. But I'll try.

Modern married women -- at least the ones like me who waited a bit -- sign away a part of life. The part that speaks freely and with pride about past lovers, and the part that gives license to complain about men, and the part that can shrug off society's critiques with, "What does the world expect? I'm doing this all on my own."

As singles, we nod in sympathy with our girlfriends at the immaturity and the recklessness of the bachelors. My fiancé has renounced his bachelor ways. Something he sees in me makes him want to do that. (It's magic.)

I can't speak for him, but I'll miss the wild camaraderie shared with independent single women. It was so much a part of my identity.

But we were always searching, right? What do you feel when you find the thing that you've been searching for but thought you'd never find?

Well, it feels like this: I sometimes miss the idea of being single, but not being single itself. I relished the general wildness of going solo, of not having a place in society, of opening my own jars. There's this thrill feeling I got when I was at a bar in some city and dressed up all cute, when a warm breeze blew through my hair and over my arms, while I sipped a mixed fruity drink. Youth and sexual attraction and a hint of danger, surrounded by sharks, were part of it. Possibility and power over my own behavior were another part. Also, I love to flirt.

I choose to give up those things with gratitude that I experienced such sensations and can write about them. Because, for all my confident reporting and life adventures and their resulting excitements, I was lonely.

I'm talking about Sunday nights and Tuesday nights, when the radio couldn't fill the void and I sometimes cried into my pillow and I prayed to God to send me an Earth person who understood.

If I think about Marriage, and its societal tendency to put people in their respective places, it scares me. I hate it on a grand scale. The titles of wife and husband -- so often the butt of dull jokes -- still make me cringe. Revolt against clichés!

But choosing to preserve love long term is its own revolt. If I consider marriage on a small scale -- of choosing before God a lifetime of caring, optimistic, good-hearted Derek; of dancing to Neil Diamond in the kitchen; of tangled legs and reading books; of the crook of an arm; of the man-smell of a used T-shirt; of caring for another human; of filling the nights with only two; of a peck on the lips each morning; of tickling and giggling -- then it's easy to say "Forever."