Post-Wedding Thoughts

Yesterday I watched my best friend get married.  It was wonderful, and now I am happy and exhausted.  Everyone and everything was beautiful.  It was so amazing to have so many people I loved in one place having such a wonderful time.  Leah and I shared so many years of being attached at the (brain) hip, that her family is like a second family to me.  To see some of them again after so many years, and to have them actually remember me, was wonderful.  Seeing how much her brother and some of her cousins have grown is....incredible.  I saw Wagner friends I hadn't seen since I left.  I told stories and relived memories that I hadn't in years.

As I may have mentioned, oh, a thousand times, this year has not been a good year for me, emotionally and self-esteem wise.  And yet I found myself spending a weekend with so many great friends who were so loving and wonderful, and at moments showered me with more praise than I probably deserve.  And even more importantly than that, I was there as the maid of honor.  Of all people in the world, Leah chose ME as the person to stand up for her on the most important day of her life.  This is the second time I have been a maid of honor, and each time it has meant...so incredibly much to me.  Weddings have always been a big deal to me: I love them, I like watching them in movies and on TV, scouring my parents' wedding album, and thinking about my own dream wedding.  Your wedding is something you tell your kids, your family and friends about.  And to be able to play such an important role in the celebration of people I love so much is the most amazing honor.  It makes me want to live up to this position, this honor, to the best of my abilities.  I want to be the kind of friend that deserves to be the maid of honor.

I've always felt a little bit overprotective and mother-y when it comes to my friends.  You can say all the shit you want about me, but if you say anything against one of my people, I will rip you apart.  I feel like girlfriends need to stick together and stick up for one another, even when they're tens or hundreds or thousands of miles away.  Being at this age where my girls are starting to fall in love and give their hearts away to other people is....scary.  I don't want the people I love to have their hearts broken.  I don't want them to settle.  I want them to find the absolute best, most perfect person in the entire world for them.  I want them to be deliriously happy every god damn day of their lives.  That said, I know it's not like old times where a woman would get married and become a part of her husband's family and leave her former life, and everyone in it, behind.  Marriage is really no different than engagement, aside from a little extra jewelry and a name change here or there.  My married friends will still be just as much a part of my life as they were when they were single.  But it's no longer my responsibility to take care of them (not that it ever really was, officially).  Now there is someone more important, that is legally designated as the person to be there every second of the day, if something is wrong or right or happy or sad.  And I just want my babies to be taken care of.  So to see someone look into the eyes of someone I care about so much with such love and adoration in their eyes, makes me so happy because I know that they would do anything for them.  If nothing else, weddings are the time that emotions are just exploding all over the place, so it's when this is the most obvious, and has been when it finally clicks with me that this is that person I have hoped they would find.  I like knowing I can cross two of my girls off of the list, knowing they're in good hands.  And it's not necessarily like I'm passing them over, but I feel like they're my little babies, and I'm tucking them in, and fluffing their pillows, and making sure the covers are tucked up under their chin, and the night light is on, and there are no monsters under the bed, before I turn off the light and close the door.  I don't even know if I'm making sense anymore, but the point is, I'm so happy my favorite girls have found people that love them and care for them, even more than I do.  And though I would love to have somebody look at me that way, it is enough to witness it second-hand.  It's such a beautiful thing.

So, I'm just rambling, in what is probably the most random and boring post-wedding blog ever.  But I just feel so full of emotions and happiness and love and exhaustion that I don't know how to put it all into words.

Leah and Lauren, I love you both so much.  I literally could not be any happier for you, I wouldn't even know how to physically contain more happiness.  Your wedding, and really the whole weekend, was such an amazing experience, and I cannot even begin to say how much it has meant to me to have been a part of it.  I can't wait to spend the rest of my life receiving your holiday newsletters, and buying Girl Scout cookies from your children, and being forced to do my fish impressions well into my arthritic years.

I love you both.  Immensely.  And I am so happy for you.

October

Ohhhhhh me oh my.


Life, she is a cruel mistress.

So, I haven't been blogging so much.  My brain has left my body.  I've actually removed it for safekeeping and am keeping it in a jar on my dresser.  Trust me, it's necessary.  Although I think it wouldn't hurt to do the same with my heart at this point.

So, I am only half participating in life this month, due to weddings and various other life issues.

Come November (or, really, October 23rd), I am taking a month off.  Unfortunately not from work.  But from life.  Will I still tweet or blog or text or see friends on occasion?  Probably.  But I'm going to stop feeling bad about not keeping up with everyone's lives, and returning calls and texts, etc.  I'm sort of a mess right now, and I need to take at least a month to be a selfish bitch and focus on myself.  So that will be November.

Novemeber is also National Novel Writing Month.  I'm doing it, guys.  Well, I'm going to try.  They actually encourage you to tell a bunch of people that you're doing it, so that the peer pressure will keep you from slacking off and not writing.  So, this is me, doing that.  I'm not foolish enough to think that I will actually accomplish writing an entire novel in one month, but I'm hoping this will at least serve to kick my years-long writer's block.  We'll see.

My best friend gets married in one week.  I can't believe it.  God, everyone's growing up so fast.  What is happening?