What originally kept me interested in reading Bob’s blog and following him on Twitter was that I could live vicariously through a lot of his Flickr photos. We both enjoy a lot of the same out door activities but I’m not currently in a position to enjoy them like he is. Bob’s landscape photography always captured me and took me back to good memories from my past, hiking, camping, skiing, made me yearn for those days. Each photo always reminds me how much I miss those sides of myself but reaffirm that they are still there, just tucked away for later.

I learned of Bob’s plans to build his own site, sell his landscape prints and add portrait / headshot photographer onto his resume of services offered. Given that I liked his photos so much I asked if he needed any models for his portfolio, he said yes, I own some nice Betsey Johnson dresses so away we went.

We’d both always wanted to do the whole Vancouver Gastown alley graffiti shoot. We did just that and the set can be viewed here, I wanted to take this post, for the most part to highlight Bob’s work in general and mention about how it meant a lot having him take my photos after having followed his work and growth as a photographer for over two years via the wonders of Flickr.

Bob knew he wanted me in the blue dress but still looking pretty natural which was fine with me, I don’t have a live in hair and make-up artist anymore, so I winged it. The evening itself was super fun, it didn’t take me long to relax, Bob does have a very naturally calming personality, he is very respectful. He wants his shot how he envisions it but he does make sure you are fully comfortable with whatever ideas may pop into his head beyond what is already pictured on the film reel of his brain while planning the shoot.

It was really great getting to help someone start building something towards their passion, it was a pleasure to work with Bob and I would of course recommend him for any of your headshot or portrait session needs! Do check out his site and enjoy the photos I’ve posted here they are a just a few of my personal favourites.

If you like what you see here be sure and join Bob’s new Facebook group for his photography site.

These photos are all property of Bob Lai Photography and have been used with the permission of the photographer.

Regardless of how bad it is, and it’s really fucking bad, it is refreshing to be able to finally say, yes, Adam and I have problems, we’re normal. Of course people know we do, but I get sick of the online facade. Sure we have a fantastic relationship but we are, hands down, going through a tough time right now. Why hide it, when it is affecting so many areas of my life?

A week or two ago I tweeted a line from one of my old poems “how can I feel so alone when you’re sitting right next to me”. This facet of my personality leaves me an excruciatingly lonely person at times. Wanting to reach out so incredibly badly, feeling frozen and not being able to do it.

It is no one’s fault. Neither of my parents grew up in demonstrative families and that wasn’t their fault either. My parents always told me they loved me but until I left home three months after turning nineteen I had never said it back.

In small ways as a teenager I was able to open up physically but back then the problems I had with affection I deemed for the most part normal adolescence stuff. And because of general teenage angst and insecurity I was able to fake being more affectionate than I really was. How I don’t know or remember, because I can’t fake it anymore as an adult, even craving every single person I meet to like me it is still more common for me to use snail mail [you should see my stationary collection] or my fingers on a key board to express affection, to reassure people I care.

I know it is difficult for people first getting to know me to understand how I can open my heart so freely in writing and then presumably close it off in person. I’m not a particularly closed off person, but if you don’t know me, let’s just say I [can] take a while to grow on people. I have friends who ask if it is okay before they hug me and some who just do it. I’ve had friends convinced they could break whatever it was holding me back and would try to force affection on me, mind you, in a caring way; but still not for me.

This runs a lot deeper for me than simply tensing up when someone hugs me. For years I couldn’t look people in the eye when I spoke to them, I know that to most it comes off as being rude, for me it was from feeling insecurity and fear.

Although it was something that always bothered me about myself, when it would come to my girlfriends, I always wanted to be able to be affectionate with them when we’d have sleep overs and give hugs without a back pat or loose arms but for the most part I couldn’t. I’d send them an affectionate note saying how much the weekend meant to me instead.

I think the best of example of just how bad it is would be how I used to treat my cat. In 1999, there was an incident that made me realize that I had an actual problem, I wasn’t just a cold bitch on the outside. Gus has always been a needy cat, she was the runt of the litter and she is spoiled rotten. But she never used to be. When Gus would jump in bed with me and try to snuggle with me I’d push her away, I’ve always been a non cuddle sleeper period, and mostly a non cuddle person in general, so having a cat putting her paws in my eyes and mouth was all fun and games during the day but when I was trying to sleep or read and she’d sit down right in the middle of whatever book I’d be reading, I never really thought anything of it; just pushing her off. I thought she’s a cat they’re supposed be independent why does she even want so much attention.

I was living with someone who also had a cat, this cat hated Gus, this cat wasn’t so much mean as she was just a total fucking terror on four legs. We never got along, myself and that cat, but she had a close relationship with her owner. It wasn’t until I saw how affectionate he was with his cat and how affectionate he was with Gus that I realized that I was depriving my cat of affection. I ignored it at first, it wasn’t as if, except for pushing her off the bed, that I was mean to her. It was years ago so I don’t remember exactly how it happened but Gus must have been trying to get some affection out of me and I wasn’t having it and this person basically yelled at me “Corinna, pet your fucking cat!”.

It didn’t happen overnight but just opening up to my bloody cat changed me, actually letting her jump up on me when I’m upset and comfort me, letting her sleep with me and not tossing her off the bed when she was ready for me to be up and walking all over me. How did I live without that before? With it being eleven years later, I’m glad I changed this behaviour towards her when I did. But then again how do I live with so little human to human contact? I have found being a good three years into my thirties now that it’s something that bothers me, a lot. And it is something that I have for a few months now been working on because I want to learn how to get over this before it’s too late, before people are gone from my life forever and I never got to give them one of those hugs that I’m starting to get better at giving, the ones where I will actually pull you in tight to me. And so far it has felt good every time I have been able to do it.

Shit happens and all but it was so EXTREME.

And for someone who is used to disclosing everything on my blog it has been a trip not being able to write exactly what happened.

We didn’t really talk most of the weekend, Adam was still pretty distant and I was still pretty sick, I didn’t eat solid food until Tuesday. I was on my liquid I have killer anxiety diet. I’ve probably lost another five pounds but I’ll gain it back, I always do.

I scared a lot of my friends and I feel like a total cunt for that, I haven’t felt that suicidal since my last actual breakdown which I looked up with my search bar, it was at the end of February 2008. But through seeing my psychiatrist for a few extra appointments, I’m doing my best, which at times throughout the week my best hasn’t been my best, or good enough, but late Monday night Adam started to talk to me again and I’ve started to process what happened from a much clearer place with eyes wide open, hindsight and awareness of red flags I missed.

I hate it when the most cliché sayings in life turn out to be true but sometimes you really do have to [almost] lose it all to see what is staring you right in the face.

when there’s nothing left to keep you here, when you’re falling behind in this big blue world

will not stop running through my mind. That song was on our wedding CD and it took me years to realize exactly why Adam had put it on there. It wasn’t as obvious as his other Waits pick, Blind Love.

There are obviously things that I have for the most part chosen to not get into on my blog. Mainly my marriage but I fucked up really bad. I did something horrible. I more than hate myself right now. I’ve been granted forgiveness from Adam but forgiving myself and the other person isn’t coming so easily.

We are just like any other couple, we aren’t perfect. I love Adam more than anything on earth. I can’t even picture my life without him, we’re talking about a man who in 2003 picked me up from my psychiatrist’s office for our second date. But we still have some serious issues.

I met Adam after a year of events so fucked up I was still recovering but I was doing fine in general and I wasn’t suffering from any post traumatic stress anymore and I also wasn’t looking for love and so when we started to walk past each other on our way to work. Things happened to put us where we were at the times we were, it was just one of those things I guess. And I remember that I trusted him almost right away and I honestly can not say there are very many people I trust, period. I never worried if he would call me, I never doubted if he was into me I never had any anxiety I just knew.

This has already been a whirlwind of a year, we’ve been working hard on keeping it together financially and I was happy or as happy as I ever can be, for a while, for longer than I ever remember being before. When I was in Bali last September I felt better about myself than I think I ever have, I missed Adam like mad, but there are things that happened there that reassured me that the odd feeling I was having was indeed a form of happiness. Sure my temper still reared and rears its ugly head at times but I have had so much peace come into my life in that last few months that I never saw coming, situations I thought were never going to end, resolutions were found, because that is who I am, I am forgiving almost to a fault.

I’ve been able to keep pretty happy, until now. And instead of doing what I always do which is fucking talk about it, or write about it, I let it allow me to do something that isn’t me, that isn’t who I have ever been. I told Adam everything that happened because I have always told him everything. We haven’t been married seven years but we’ve been together for seven years and a lot of shit happens in seven years and with the combination of our pasts we’ve ended up in a tough spot and I handled it in a way I never saw coming.

I am so lucky to have a man who stays with me when I am so damaged. When I fight suicidal thoughts almost daily, I fight them fucking hard, I talk about it, because the tattoo for the friend I lost is on my fucking arm and there is a fighter in there somewhere who does not want to die but my brain won’t shut the mother fuck up. And having lost someone to suicide I need to be able to say “I can’t stop thinking about just renting a car and driving away and doing what PH did” and you don’t even want to know about the other demons haunting my head. Adam is always there for me, I don’t even know why, I don’t. He has seen me almost unconscious and put into an ambulance and I could have once again died because I’m a fucked up freak.

I knew that I was in a weak place re: my last post and what happened which was not an internet bully situation left me pretty upset, I have been told by more than just my psychiatrist that the way I was treated would mess up someone who suffers from no mental illness. I allowed myself to be vulnerable where I generally never ever allow myself to be and the fallout from the biggest mistake I have ever made – and I guess I should at least say that NO I did not sleep with anyone, I know this is a cryptic post but more than just my feelings and emotions have been affected by what happened.

And then I made it worse in the most idiotic moment of insecurity I ended up making myself look like someone that is so far from who I am that I’m having trouble even processing some of the cruelty that was tossed my way today. Shit happens in life it is what you do to fix it that really matters and when the other person refuses to take responsibility for their actions and puts it all on me I’m not going to fucking take it. It takes two to tango and I’m quite frankly sickened by the attitude of the person. I say really stupid shit when I’m hurt and upset and I was hurt and upset and confused and that lead to me being called so many things I again just don’t believe I’m needed here. I’m horrible, I hurt my husband. But I resent people who will not take responsibility for their actions it drives me insane. Of course I know I can’t make anyone do anything, people do what they want to do when they want to do it, I learned that lesson years ago. But it doesn’t make it any easier. The things that were said to me today I may have deserved at the time but it was the first time I think maybe ever where I felt helpless in the sense that someone, anyone, thinks that I am a terrible, horrible person. I hate myself enough I just don’t need it. I thought I was making a new friend, I thought no matter what happened that this person was at least my friend, although a new friend, still a friend.

I fucked up, bad, in a lot of ways. I’m really struggling, I’ve been hiding it, I was afraid to admit I was starting to slip emotionally because I have been able to handle everything that has been thrown my way better than I ever have before and there have been genuine moments when I’ve been proud of myself, and I just took a million steps back and I hurt, Adam hurts and I know we will get through this, that has already been discussed and as I’ve mentioned before nothing is posted on this blog that Adam doesn’t read or edits before it goes up. I will learn a lot from this, I believe very strongly that whether it is a positive or negative situation that comes into my life that it holds lessons that I must find. Every person I meet is a teacher of sorts. Some are seriously shitty ones, but man do I learn a lot from the douche bags and bitches. Thankfully there are no bitches in my life at present.

I was already being eaten alive by my anxiety because of the bullying trigger and I fucking hate myself for showing weakness in a place that I’ve never shown it before. I’m just sorry, sorry I did what I did, sorry I’m being so misunderstood, sorry I’m alive. I know I have it good but the smorgasbord of triggers I’ve had is bowling me over. I’m hanging on for dear life right now. I see my shrink again on Monday because I’m on a suicide watch of sorts which is even MORE fun for Adam. yeah worst fucking wife in the world award.

So, I guess, go a head, let me have it, I deserve it.

People have always called me a paranoid person.

No matter how well I am doing, of all the variables I face dealing with chronic depression I have some of the most trouble dealing with paranoia. With years of therapy I know that paranoia is actually nothing more than having a negative attentional bias towards something, not allowing myself the observation of any positive feelings to help convince myself that no, everyone does NOT hate me or think I’m stupid or useless and that I shouldn’t even be entertaining these negative thoughts and overwhelming feelings.

It doesn’t matter how much medication I’m on or not on. There is no medication that helps me with this. This is something that to different degrees I have always dealt with, but when you add anxiety into the mix, I feel like my innards are being blown up and twisted into balloon animals and not even cool ones at that. I’m allowed to take an extra clonazepam on really bad days to curb my anxiety but that still leaves me unable to eat because when I’m hit with paranoid anxiety attacks just because I can get my stomach out of the knots with the clonazepam I still can’t force myself to eat as I still feel like I am going to barf all over everything.

Recently something happened where I was bullied, badly, yet again in my life, being a few years into my thirties now just adds to my utter disappointment in myself. And it has unfortunately triggered my negative attentional bias and my anxiety to off the chart levels. Not to mention I’ve had two idiots totally fucking with me on Twitter which hasn’t helped matters.

The last two weeks have had me feeling like there is no reason for me to be here. I despise feeling like this. What happened just reminds me that no matter how much I work on myself, no matter how hard I try to work on my posture and stand up straight, no matter how many people tell me that what happened was not my fault, that it obviously is, there is obviously still something very wrong with me, after now eight years under the same psychiatrist’s care it blows my mind that I am still a target for bullies. It makes me angry it makes me feel like everything my father has ever said about me is true and that I don’t deserve good things. It brings me back to having to have exchange students, who were staying with us when I was in high school, come and get me to keep me from getting beat up. I just don’t want to deal with this anymore.

It hurts really bad.

And speaking of my father, it also makes me resent even more how far away my parents are, I deduce that no one understands my relationship with them, not Adam, not even me, but last week I needed to be able to pick up the phone so badly and just unload to my parents and I couldn’t. They are too secluded for Skype. Getting and holding a clear phone connection is a challenge, not cheap and with the time difference we are up at the same time for a very short period of time. I even know I probably would have just ended up more upset talking to them if I didn’t hear what I needed, but simply not even being able to take the chance just reminded me again yet again that they left me here, that retiring to Asia was more important than their only child and fuck it, everything hurts. I don’t know why I can’t let this illusion of my parents suddenly being ideal parents go, they did the best they could with a problem child.

This will of course pass, just not soon enough, it is hard enough to deal with these two facets of my depression but when they nail me at once I have to hang on for dear life I know that I’m not headed for break down mode, what happened is only going to make me stronger. But it sucks feeling like a loser, that is never good. Worrying constantly that people are out to destroy my reputation, worrying that some people are NEVER going to give me a second chance, worrying that people don’t want me around – what have you – is all petty and idiotic and I wish I could have a new brain.

Between my health, the cat, heading back to work and trying to write for ThinkHero nothing has been going as planned. I don’t mind doing bullet point posts but only when the points are small and not all worthy of their own post.

I think one of the worst things we are dealing with is that Adam’s UI runs out next month. He’s in a union or he’d likely have found work by now. It has hit the point where we have no choice, he will have to leave the union or things will become dire. We’ve lived for almost seven years with no extended medical, I had it when I was still in corporate jobs but Adam wasn’t on it. Both of us having it for the period we did, with the medical problems we have or that have come up, it hasn’t even helped. For example, the most expensive of any of my medications is my allergy spray and it isn’t covered. Sure I need new lenses in my glasses but I’ll just keep having our medical stuff written off on our taxes like I always do.

I have returned to work as a PA on season 3 of Fringe. I’m feeling pretty good about myself having been called back for another season. Given this show films downtown as much as it does and because I’m back on my bike, getting to and from locations has just become about 80% easier. I’m still working on call / part time, but this works best for me. The longer I do this work the more I enjoy it, the work itself isn’t hard, it’s the hours that make the work hard, get used to those and you are good to go. And that is basically all I can say about that.

I’m feeling a tad overwhelmed because a lot of positive things seem to be coming in my direction, yet I’m terrified of my health, my depression, or my ‘I don’t deserve good things’ side of my brain taking over and fucking it all up. I invented self sabotage.

As mentioned I started writing for ThinkHero, I have gotten a few really good pieces up but my intent was to post more and now I’m paranoid I won’t be offering up enough to keep me on, to which my friends say “are you kidding me you are writing for free” to which I say – yes, but I said I was going to do such and such and now I’ve been sick and going for test after test after flippin’ test and go see this specialist and OH lets have a barium enema while we’re at it. That now means another four plus doctors have had their finger up my ass in the last month. I intentionally don’t even shave my INNER ass cheeks anymore. Fuck it, and I sport a 70’s bush too while I’m talking about pubes. Deal with it.

Not to mention:

My blood work has come back showing I have VERY low blood sugar and that I am hypoglycemic. This means I have to see another specialist because I do not as of yet have diabetes and part of the goal here is keeping it that way. Eating every three hours is a real new one for me. I’ve never had an eating disorder but I do not like food and I eat because I have to, not because I want to, making myself eat every three hours makes me feel like I’m going to barf, sucks it is already helping me feel better. No idea if it is affecting my moods because I have too much going on to look that deeply in upon myself yet. This explains A LOT of my complaints over the last few months, dizziness worse than my normal shitty balance falling over, I’m a clumsy pants nonsense, my over the top tiredness, low energy and dropping close to fifteen pounds off my already small frame. This was so odd for me because I’m used to losing weight when I’m depressed but aside from these complaints, mentally I’ve still been doing fairly well. We were chalking everything up to the stress of having no full time work since January but I was pretty sure it was more than that being pretty in-tune with when and why I’m losing or gaining weight.

Speaking of me MENTALLY my meds have been dropped again. I’m on the lowest amount of meds I’ve been in oh, shit maybe four years. There is only 25 mg between me and NO MORE Seroquel the least favourite of the three meds I take, I have MANY an argument or rather *words* with my psychiatrist about him putting me on Seroquel. I’ve stopped waiting for the ball to drop, and I’m really giving this feeling better stuff a go. As I’ve mentioned this doesn’t mean I don’t have BRUTALLY bad days where it is ALL I HAVE not to toss myself out in front of a bus, but I’m hanging onto the rails of the sanity train for dear life and I will keep riding it no matter how many people try and toss me off for as long as I can.

Now for the hardest news to share. Gus isn’t doing so good. When we went to Langley for the wedding we thought not hearing from my girlfriend was a good thing, turned out she didn’t want to ruin our weekend. We came home to find that Gus had attacked someone who had not only known her since 1996 but had sat her on numerous occasions some over two weeks long back when I used to be a travel agent. This has left us with some hard and shitty decisions that had to be made, because we can’t have Gus attacking our friends, we won’t be spending Christmas with our siblings, we won’t be able to see our friends in Tofino and probably the worst for my parents is we can’t go to Bali until…… … and I can’t risk going to Bali myself and missing my last month with her, she is having enough trouble with my having returned to work. She is also dropping weight at a rather drastic rate. So much so that we were going to take her in early for her six month check up. It is hard to believe it has already been a year since we had to put her on pain medication and up until about two months ago she was doing really well. Her blood work has all come back fine both times it has been taken, she doesn’t have any kidney or liver problems. We made the decision to wait until her check up in September. We get her weighed once a month when we pick up her medication and are being pressured to bring her in but here’s the deal; Having picked wee Gus when she was the runt of the litter and she wasn’t the last kitteh but she was the one I fell in love with even thinking she was a boy, I know her and I know that taking her in for blood tests in June instead of September is only going to have to have her pricked an extra time. Forget the cost, it has nothing to do with that, everyone knows we can’t afford this to happen right now but who is ever ready for this financially or mentally or fucking in any way. The fact remains that even though it is beyond heartbreaking when Gus goes to lay on the floor right now and her bones make a horrible sound as they hit the floor, she is happy, she has energy she is still feisty, she still sits with us, sleeps with us, she isn’t hiding. She is eating less, but she is drinking more. Gus has lived a great long life, she was my best little furry buddy and now she is our best furry little buddy and we are going to keep her comfortable as long as possible but not drag the inevitable out. She is dying of old age, plain and simple. It is really, really hard, I don’t know what I’m going to do without her. I don’t like to think that far ahead yet. It sneaks in sometimes, but I’m not ready.

Last weekend Adam and I were in Langley and spent a night way out in Chilliwack, there are some super nice mountains that far out of the city, beautiful British Columbia all over the place. I sent two texts messages to Twitter and I used a computer once because my phone was randomly texting important pertinent information to Safeway, and I needed my response to reach the person it came from but I wasn’t even on it for five minutes. Other than that I was completely unplugged. We were at my youngest Sister (in-laws) wedding. And lucky me I get to post photos!

It was three full days away from my cat though, with family I hadn’t seen or spoken to since we got married in 2006. I was afraid of anxiety attacks, migraines, one of my ass or intestinal ailments acting up, totally freaking out, losing it, ruining everything and having to go home. When I thought about it I realized that I hadn’t even spent that much time with a large(r) amount of my own side of the family since 1994, when I was 17 years old and we went back to Ontario for Christmas. I did make a trip back in 2000 as well, but it was hardly 4 days, also for Christmas but it was to visit a very specific person in the family and whoever else I got to see was great but I didn’t see that many.

I don’t like being away from home period, which upon thinking about recently I realized I’ve been like that since I was a kid, I remember I used to come home from sleep overs in the middle of the night. When my parents where still living in Prince George I would fly home early pretty regularly. I knew I was going to be out there from early Friday until who knew when on Sunday.

Back when Adam and I got married my relationship with the people who were to become my in-laws was strained to say the very least. I didn’t actually talk to my sister in laws or father in law at all at our wedding. I had mentally prepared for months to not let how hard that day was going to be get to me, it was one of the best acts I’ve ever put on knowing I was walking down the aisle in front of some people who had reason not to like me, or who had heard enough negative things about me that in only one day I wasn’t going to change anyones mind. I’m used to being misunderstood, but in the case of my soon to be sisters, fucking up the chance at a relationship I had grown up wanting more than anything sucked, really bad.

Over the years that we’ve been married my SILs and I have worked out our differences and we get along better than I ever could have dreamed. I don’t even remember how it happened, it just did. We started hanging out with Kristy my youngest sister and her boyfriend Greg who is now her husband and my brother. Sara started to make a point to come over and see us whenever she was here from Philly. It happened slowly but I was starting to feel like these two women really had my back, that they didn’t just like me that they were starting to love me like real family. Whoa, what a trip that was.

Most people know I’m an only child but what a lot of people don’t know is that I grew up with just my parents. I had an incredibly hard time making and keeping friends and whatever these problems were they were always my fault, that is all I learned was that it was my fault not how to properly socialize or make friends. I never spent enough time with anyone in my extended family to build an actual relationship with them, I don’t know any of them, I know things about them, and I’ve heard things about them but I don’t KNOW them. The time I spent so alone as a child is no doubt why as an adult I spend, at least by choice now, a shit load of time at home. It was in 1985 that my parents made a choice to leave our entire family in Ontario and go as far West as you can coming to British Columbia.

Not spending a lot of time with Adam’s family never bothered me. Not getting invited out for Thanksgiving, who cares! I didn’t have to pretend I wanted to be there and sneak out to smoke pot at any escapable moment I could find. I have enough trouble holding my shit together when my parents visit me instead of me visiting them, I feel trapped, I feel they don’t listen to me or respect my space. I try and set boundaries when they visit but it always leads to overly dramatic fights and periods of time when we have no contact at all. Again, my fault.

Aside from mending and building a relationship with my sister in laws the only other person on that side of the family who I’d met that I knew liked me for sure was my Grandma. She spoils Adam and I rotten and it’s awesome. She was the one Adam learned how to make sock monkeys from so my starting to make the sock monkeys helped me out there a bit I think.

I started to get excited about this wedding pretty early on, I think it is probably for the best that I kept most of my focus on Kristy and Greg and didn’t spend much time thinking about the big picture, which was three full days with the Carlson clan who I hadn’t seen since we married and I’d be meeting members of an entire new family that I’m now a part of, being an only child this was incredibly overwhelming, it is very hard for me to connect which titles go with who, I have the basics down, but try to figure out what the correct term for the relation of anyone outside a brother or a sister and I really don’t have a clue. We hadn’t even been out to Langley, Daddy Bland had stopped by our place a couple of times over the years, but I would rarely accompany Adam on a coffee or eating excursion if there was one. I didn’t see the point, he was never going to like me and it wasn’t because I started to call him Daddy Bland, that’s his middle name.

Last weekend, up until the hangover on Sunday, was one of the best weekends I have had in ages. We’d met Sara at the airport in the morning to hitch a ride to Langley whilst also to pick up her boyfriend and headed straight for ground zero – my father in law’s fancy garage, already set up all nice, in purple and black for the Sunday gift opening. Family arrived all day, some from Dawson Creek, Edmonton, they came from all over. All recognizing me but me recognizing none of them. ONLY because it is nearly impossible for a bride to remember talking to her own family at her wedding let alone members of her new one, at least it was for me anyway, and I’ve heard that is very common.

We took off with Sara and Chris to set up the ceremony and reception hall and watch the rehearsal which Adam was needed for as he played the guitar and harmonica as Kristy’s wedding party and then Kristy and her dad walked down the aisle the following day. I still felt extremely overwhelmed at times and shed a few tears trying really hard not to let my anxiety get the best of me and allow my head to convince me everyone hated me. The bridesmaids couldn’t believe it when I told them I had social anxiety. I had told Adam I wasn’t taking any crap in Langley, yes I knew it was all about Kristy and Greg but this didn’t mean I was going to feel excluded. Not at one moment did I feel excluded. I even had some bonding moments with my step mother in law, I never saw that day coming and it was awesome. Real conversations.

Getting to spend time with both of my sisters at the same time was something I never thought I’d have in my life. I didn’t know if we would ever get along, but we do, and pretty well too. They are both such fantastic, yet different women. Sara and I both like reading, and looking like dorks in photos, she calls random people creeps, I call them jerks. Kristy likes country music SHIT I LIKE COUNTRY MUSIC. HA TAKE THAT INTERNET. Kristy is sensitive, I know I don’t have to tell any of you this but I’M super sensitive. And we all want to get along and want to have a relationship, that means more to me than I can really put into words, I’ve been trying to find them, I suppose they are here in this novel of a post somewhere. I don’t feel as lonely anymore. Talking and laughing with them, the cousins and aunts, uncles, grandma, and being myself – it made me happy, very happy, yet sad, because as an adult I haven’t been privy to times like this with my own side of the family. I never even thought family mattered to me. I have a wonderful husband and a cat, I’m set. But family does matter to me, I don’t know how to connect with my own (and I’m not talking about my parents) but connecting with my in-laws has shown me I can do it.

Weddings are an interesting thing, they can bring out the best and worst in almost everyone included. I needed that wedding, I needed that time with those two women, I’ve always bragged about their accomplishments, always been proud of the paths they chose but I didn’t know how to accept that we were all going to love one another unconditionally, that it was even possible, despite having more than just books and music in common, but we put up and took down that weekend together, Kristy got hitched, we partied like we’d never partied before and I was left thinking that Christmas can’t come around too soon so the six of us get to spend time together again, who knew that I would ever look forward to Christmas, let alone one with family.