Our wedding photographers continually surprise and delight us and only 23% of that is even related to our wedding.
We are lucky in that they have become our fo' reals friends and introduced us to lots of wonderful things, not the least of which are their kitties, Boris & Mo:
A few weeks ago they invited us over for dinner, some old school Mario Kart playing and they wanted to show us a video they had made about their trip to California (where they own and keep an air-stream to work out of from time to time).
They have a projector and took great care to set everything up 'just so' and I remember as they were doing this I was thinking, "Wow, they are super psyched about their air-stream video...it must be badass". Which totally would not have surprised me because everything I have seen them make is beautiful (and badass).
It seems though, that no matter how many "TWISTS!" they pull on us (this was not the first surprise they had laid out on us), we will never see it coming.
Instead of a video about their air-stream and trip to California, this is what we saw:
When I think about Mary & Joel and what they do and how we know them, there are several things that just blow me away about how lucky we were and are:
1) I had a very specific vision of what I wanted our wedding photos to be like. Mary & Joel fit that vision exactly.
2) Not only do they live in the same little city that we do (Portland, OR), they LITERALLY live about 7 minutes away from where we live.
3) In our first meeting together Ben & Joel bonded over games and as it got progressively nerdier, I knew it was going to work out.
4) They don't normally shoot video (or at all?) but are always trying new things and I'm sort of in disbelief that we got to be the lucky ones that they started out on in that respect.
5) They were the last people beside me and Ben to leave the wedding site and they even hauled some of our stuff in their car to our apartment.
6) They bought Ben a pie that same night of the wedding because he hadn't gotten to eat any of the wedding pie.
7) They can make the most delicious hummus and vegan tzatziki sauce that tastes just like the real deal.
I could go on and on. As freelancers they are more on top of their game than we are and they are always passing on helpful tips and information on how they make it work.
All this to say that I just feel lucky and blessed and grateful for their existence in this world and that we have crossed paths at all.
Um, so here is me freaking out about something that it is probably funny for someone like me to freak out about.
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform published a 3-in-1 omnibus of the first 3 Anne of Green Gables books...and they put a blonde on the cover (queue major Amazon review backlash and I guess now their is no image associated with the book on Amazon...yay!).
Here is the cover, though I suspect it won't be the cover for much longer as people are fuh-reaking out:
1) I don't really care about her come-hither eyes because this is a 3-in-1 book, the last of which is Anne's life in college so she can "make eyes" at whoever she wants.
2) The plaid shirt is kind of lame but I *guess* it's passable.
BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT:
3) Anne's hair is red. Red! RED. Red red red. RED!! Red, dammit!
This is not a small thing. I mean, there are major events in the books that revolve around Anne having RED HAIR. It has huge influence on who she is as a person. I would go so far as to call it a theme of the books. And it is talked about through the entire series AND in the 2 additional books that focus on her children.
I could maybe understand someone making this kind of mistake on a book that no one knows that much about...but these books are beloved by millions (obviously I am one of those millions), and most people know that Anne has red hair and that her name is spelled with an E on the end.
I am really only mock-angry about this (because it's fun to be mock-angry about things), but seriously...
I have been going to therapy for 6 weeks now and I have had 5 sessions. I missed a session the week before last...the jury is out on whether or not my subconscious tricked me into thinking my appointment was an hour later than it actually was scheduled for. My therapist seems to think that is the case and while I admit her case does have merit...I'm still not so sure.
I was skeptical about my therapist at first...she didn't seem like
someone I could bear hug. But she did seem kind and sympathetic and now
that I have been seeing her for a while, I really like her. I never
actually want to go to my appointment, I'm always a little worried about
what she thinks about me, and I want her to think I am awesome at being
self aware and making progress...but I know that these are things that
have more to do with me than with her. I never want to go to my
appointment because I don't want to have to be in therapy - it
frustrates and angers me and I don't like the sadness and pain that
come up from it. I worry about what she thinks about me because I worry
about what EVERYONE IN THE WORLD thinks about me. That's just the way
it is. I worry less what she thinks about me than other people
so...that's the best I can do for now.
The first 3 weeks were awful. I mean, it felt good to dump on someone that doesn't have a personal investment in my emotional well being - I didn't have to feel guilty for bringing them down because I wasn't. It felt good to cry (a lot) and again, not feel like I was bringing someone down. But with those first few weeks all of my emotional baggage came roaring to the surface and I couldn't repress it because I HAD to think about it because I was going to be talking about it in 6 more days, 5 more days, 4 more days...once a week I was forcing myself to be honest about all the sad thoughts and feelings whirling about in my head and my heart and that meant they were constantly on my mind the other 6 days of the week.
I was horribly sad for 3 weeks straight and I was starting to get worried because for me, being that sad all the time, is not sustainable. It was affecting all the other areas of my life and I hated it. I was panicking about things I would normally not bat an eye at, I was feeling a little bit withdrawn from Ben and also feeling like I couldn't be as supportive a partner as I have been for Ben in the past. He kept asking me what he could do to help me and the only thing I could think of and say was, "Just take care of yourself"...because I could barely take care of myself. I also felt overwhelmed if I had more than one social engagement in a week and even one felt like a lot of work following through on. I have been a sorry excuse for a friend these days and I'm still not back at my best friendship-ability (not even close).
After 3 weeks of sadness though...I started to level out. I think it might be that I hadn't let myself be sad about a lot of things and now that I was allowing that there was a surplus of pain that needed to be expressed. I expressed it and now I don't feel as weighted down by that sadness. It's still there, but I am expressing it as I go so there is no buildup...or at least, not much of one.
After the overwhelming sadness passed, I started to feel frustrated. Frustrated at this meandering feeling I had. Frustrated that I wasn't doing anything those other 6 days of the week to help myself progress. At first I directed this frustration at my therapist (obviously), but then I realized that I don't have to wait for her to tell me what to do in order to move forward, to make change, to ACT. I decided to just starting DOING things, and then if I want or feel the need, I can talk to her about the things that I do and how they make me feel. This seems so simple in retrospect: just do, act, LIVE...and then deal with whatever fallout may (or more likely may NOT) occur. But for me, I have kept myself in a state of arrested development, afraid to take more than 2 steps in any direction for fear of...I know not what. But now I feel like if I do something and it's just horribly awful...I can dump my emotions all over my therapist and hope to learn something about myself in the process.
Therapy is good. Therapy is annoying. Therapy is cathartic. Therapy is a motivating pain in my ass. Therapy is good. Therapy is frustrating. Therapy is relieving. Therapy is ridiculous. Therapy is good.
I just sent 5 emails to 5 different therapists asking them about their rates and telling them what I want (need) to talk to someone about.
I have been putting this off for over 2 months (well, 6 years and 2 months), because I don't want to have to go to therapy. I don't want to have to go to therapy because I know that therapy is what I need in order to grow. And I know that growing hurts. It hurts like a sonovabitch. And I just don't want to feel all the pain. Right now, I can ignore the pain and it only creeps up on me every few months or so. When I start therapy, I will be feeling the pain once a week or once every two weeks. At the least. I mean, this shit could last for days. It most likely will. This means I might cry every day for several days in a row over many weeks or even months. And I KNOW I will cry. A LOT. I hate crying. I get embarrassed when I cry and it makes me feel weak. This sucks. I mean, it really, really sucks.
I don't want to have to need this. I don't want to need someone's help in this area. I don't want to feel weak and scared and unsure. But I just had a slight meltdown at the idea of changing my last name now that I'm married and as I started to think about why, I realized that I am so totally afraid of losing myself. I don't think I should ever be afraid that I am going to lose myself and the fact that I am indicates to me that this is much deeper or even completely unrelated to a potential name change. I have just now realized that this is a perpetual fear for me and I hate feeling this way.
That is why when I think about going to see a therapist, I start to feel angry and resentful. That anger and resentment goes very quickly from being directed at no one to being directed at the currently non-existent therapist. I realize that this is absurd and so I have been resistant. I have looked at several dozen therapist profiles and NOT contacted any of them. I have come up with a myriad of reasons as to why I shouldn't see this one or that one. I stressed myself out over the idea that the 1st person I went to see just wouldn't work out and this all would be a big disappointment. Or they would be weird or rude and I wouldn't be able to bring myself to find another one. I let all these excuses keep me from reaching out. Until today.
Today was my 1st step toward getting better. Being better. If I'm being nice to myself I will say it was my 2nd step and that looking at the profiles was the 1st step. Maybe today is an OK day for me to be nice to myself. Because it would be nice to feel less like this sad, warty pumpkin on the inside:
And more like this sunny, happy, yellow hat instead:
Many people at our wedding were moved by the vows that Ben and I wrote for each other and the promises that we wrote with each other. We had several requests right after the ceremony for the vows and promises to be posted somewhere - some because they wanted to be able to revisit them and others because they were not able to hear all of them (mic issues, what's new?). My brother actually asked if he could "steal" them...he didn't tell me what for but I can only assume he is up to some sort of tomfoolery. I can tell you that my goal in writing my vows was to make them personal and meaningful to Ben and me but to not lay out all of our intimate, personal feelings in front of everyone. There are some things that are too precious to share with the world and I wasn't out to prove to anyone that I absolutely love Ben more than anything...I think I show that quite enough. I mean, more than one person has said "BARF" to me in reaction to me being all lovey over Ben so...yeah. From what Ben told me, his goal was to match me in emotional intensity (neither too much nor too little), and to make sure that he communicated to me how special I am to him. I believe we both succeeded.
These were taken by our friend Amanda "Hug n' Kiss" Hoffman, the lovely lady of our friend Michelle "Michalba" Alba. Thank you Hug n' Kiss!
We wrote our vows privately and didn't share them until the ceremony. We wrote the promises together and are already referencing them in our daily life (we pretty much already do all these things - they were just promises to continue doing them). I'm also including the song we sang together. It is not a recording of us (as far as I know, that doesn't exist? If you recorded it, I would love to have a copy!), it is the original song by the actual band that sings it. They are called Quiet Company and while it is not a husband/wife duo, the lead singer brought his wife in to record this song with him on their newest album. It is an incredibly sweet song. The reason Ben and I sang a song during the ceremony was because we wanted to have a song but didn't want to ask anyone to sing during the ceremony - that just seemed too formal. Also, it was fun and sweet to do.
Ben's Vows
When I was a very young boy I thought love was expressed by power ballads and movie tropes. I thought that it was a portal one was required to pass through in order to receive kissing and hand-holding privileges. I thought it was a context where a person demonstrated, perpetually, how cool they were for whomever was lucky enough to accept their proposal of devotion. Recognizing a perfect love-candidate, it seemed to me, was a test passed by the initiated and that once you had it in your grasp things would proceed like a kind of clockwork that was somehow immune to wearing down if chosen right. This set of ideas stayed in place for longer than one would think.
When I came to Oregon I was looking for an opportunity to start fresh and avoid old patterns. I was willing to subvert my intuitions and be more disciplined about how I would interact with other people I didn't just wanted to act good. I wanted to BE good.
Around this time of reaching out and building a new community, I met you. You were immediately recognizable as the genuine article. Your priorities were unorthodox in a way that intrigued me from the start. All of the things I had hoped for from my interactions with another human being, in my best moments, were (and are now), present in you. I didn't want to spoil it by assuming anything about what our connected to each other would be. I struggled to behave externally in a way that betrayed my inner excitement. None of the period spent waiting was in vain because it gave us each the opportunity to build trust and a new vocabulary for interaction with one another. This period in time was when I felt like I had graduated to become a full person; I am better in every way because of you. You taught me what unselfconscious, sincere and true love was because I suddenly didn't care about looking cool, defining anything in reference to my self or mastering some imagined challenge; I cared about you and your happiness. I was willing to do whatever would improve or enhance your chances of joy in this world.
From that happy moment forward all my choices have included that primary concern. I want to put you first because you do that for everyone else, including me. You are the kind, open, inquisitive, empathetic, joyful, hopeful, diplomatic ideal that I've always striven toward in my own efforts at personal development. To me, you represent what the world, and our life in it, can be when stripped of prejudice and with consistent expression of the utmost concern for those around us. That kind of honest, selfless love for others strips away conceit and humbles me in a way that I am continually grateful for . You are the finest person I've ever met and I am overwhelmed by my good fortune every day that I'm lucky enough to spend in your company.
I am of the belief that we only have one lifetime to experience all that the universe has to offer; I want to spend that lifetime with you. Through you I have come to understand that to love someone fully is to be vulnerable, to have that vulnerability treated with the highest regard and reciprocated. We trust each other and give each other space to explore what new opportunities life affords. Yours is the face I most want to see each and every day regardless of the tenor of my circumstances. I love you more than anything in this world, LindseyAnne, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity to demonstrate that fact every day, from this moment forward, for as long as I live.
Lindsey's Vows
I don't believe in soul mates...but that doesn't stop me from feeling like I was made to be with you.
I don't believe it's a good idea to feel that another person complete you...but that doesn't stop me from feeling that you've made my life whole.
I never believed that I would marry someone that would treat me with the level of kindness, patience and boundless affection that you show me every day. I am so grateful and often overwhelmed by how much you love me. I always feel wrapped up in your love and I treasure it more than anything. Thank you for loving me so much, in the way that you do. I feel honored and blessed that you love me and that you choose to be with me.
I love you. I love you as deep and as wide and as high as my soul can reach. I love you to the level of every day's most quiet need. I love you freely, I love you purely. I love you with a passion put to use in my old griefs and with my childhood's faith. I love you with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints. I love you with the breath, the smiles and the tears of my whole life. For as long as I live, I will love you with all that I am.
Side Note for Those Who May Not Know: That last paragraph is actually a (very) slight reinterpretation of Sonnet 43 of the Sonnets from the Portuguese series written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It gets riffed on in pop culture a lot (it's the one that starts "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."), but no one ever seems to pay attention to the rest of the poem which is unfortunate because it is so incredibly beautiful. It resonates with me on more than one level and perfectly encompasses some of the ways that I love Ben.
The Promises
Ben: I promise to love you. Lindsey: I promise to love you. B: I promise to hold you anytime you ask and even when you don't. L: I promise to kiss you as much as possible. B: I promise not to make you watch the Star Wars trilogy with me more than one time a year. L: I promise to tell you when I'm upset and not hold it all in. B: I promise to sometimes just listen without trying to solve what's wrong. L: I promise to be faithful and devoted to you. B: To take time for just us, with no drawing. L: To take care of you and hold you up when you need it. B: To cuddle you more than I cuddle our cats. L: To give each new game you buy at least 2 tries before I decide if it's not for me. B: To work hard on shutting the drawers and cabinets. L: To play music and sing with you. B: To make up silly songs for you. L: To try new things. B: To be less anxious about money when fun is possible by spending a bit of it. L: To be happy and to endeavor to bring you happiness and ease your worries. B: To be encouraging regarding new ventures. L: To scratch your back when asked nicely. B: To keep my displays of affection context appropriate. L: To be a united front when we have children. B: To parent our children as an equal with you. L: To be the best person I can be so that we can always be great together. B: To give you room to grow as we get old together. L: To trust in you and believe in you. B: To take trips and go on adventures with you. L: To always let you be you, even if it is sometimes a challenge. B: To not demand evidence when it is about feelings. L: To be loyal to you, to protect you and to never let the sun go down without resolution and peace. B: To never go to bed without kissing you and telling you that I love you. L: To create a safe haven for you in our home. B: I promise to be your husband. L: I promise to be your wife.
The Song This is the only studio recorded version of this song I can find online. I kind of love that it has Spanish subtitles.
I have so much stuff in my head that has been trying to sort itself out for the last 6 years and I thought that I was dealing with it like a goddamn champ but it turns out...I wasn't. And apparently planning a wedding has made me realize this. And planning a wedding means I feel like I need to postpone dealing with it.
My plan right now is to get married first, and then talk to a therapist. I can't imagine trying to have appointments with a therapist, have sobbing meltdowns every week (yes, I am to that point where if I talk about this stuff I cry a lot), and continue to effectively get everything done that needs to get done for the wedding. I've already picked out the therapist I want to speak with - she has brown hair and a nice smile. She is older than me but not so old that she could be my mom. Every therapist I felt drawn to looked like this. I don't know if that means anything or not.
I should probably mention, because I said that I've been trying to sort things out for 6 years and that's about how long Ben and I have been together: my need to speak with a therapist is not necessitated by my relationship with Ben. I mean, I will probably talk about him in my sessions...of course I will talk about him in my sessions...and I have ideas of what those things will be. Most likely it will be about how to continue to maintain my sense of self as a person that doesn't have a super strong sense of self but is in a relationship with someone who is very sure of who he is. Ben doesn't impose himself on me, he does the opposite: he is endlessly encouraging and supportive and he wants me to be autonomous...I just have issues that have nothing to do with who he is but that are also reflected back to me off the sheen of his confidence. Now that I've talked more about him than anything else I'm sure it seems he is the impetus behind my need to see a therapist - I can assure you he is NOT.
My reasons for needing to see a therapist are oh so similar to so many other people's reasons for needing to see a therapist: family relational issues & loss of religious faith...and basically how those things have affected my choices and who I've become.
I've had some harsh things said to me since I stopped being a Christian...maybe only 2 or 3 people even considered that it might actually have been an involuntary, painful loss. It's something that I've been grieving for the last 4 years or so and I don't know how to process it or how to move forward with it. I consider faith to be intensely personal and I don't understand why people feel the need to insert themselves into my journey - I would certainly never insert myself into theirs. I didn't even do that when I was a Christian and I was taught that it was a moral imperative to save other people's souls. I don't understand why so much judgement would be leveled at someone simply for saying they just weren't as sure as they were before. That's really all I've been saying - I'm just not as sure as I was before.
I am thinking about writing about my therapy experience here but I cannot say how transparent I will be. I am a fairly open person and I don't mind sharing just about anything about myself and my life...but I think it may be unkind and unfair to lay out conversations and interactions that were had privately, no matter how cathartic and satisfying it might be to me to do so. I do think talking about these things in a vague manner would actually come across as passive aggressive but I'm not going to express every thought & emotion in my head & heart just so I can feel justified and righteous and "heard" at the expense of other people in my life. See?! That right there? Totally vague...and could totally be seen as passive aggressive. Or maybe it just seems passive aggressive to me because I know things that you don't...like maybe I've been on the reverse end of that emotional dumping and it sucks. Passive. Aggressive. I clearly need therapy ;P
So, yeah...family relational issues, loss of religious faith, weak sense of self/identity...and it's all jumbled up together and it's confusing and it's painful and it makes me sad. So to a therapist I go.
One last thing: I do want to note that I am OK. I am happy day to day and I couldn't be happier about my relationship with Ben - every day with him is the best, he makes all my days great and sunshiny and I'm not depressed. There is just this underlying current of personal stuff that I need to figure out for myself. So that I can just be me. So that I can just be.
Something interesting and a bit disconcerting happened since I posted the previous installment of this story. I found out that *Suzie had discovered my blog (she has her own blog and wrote a post about my post) and had read at least one portion of this story - namely, she had read Part Five wherein I had posted a picture that I had found on the internet that was not of Suzie but that I was hoping would convey how she was attired the first time we met. She was not necessarily upset by my picture choice but disagreed with the idea that it was at all reflective of how she looked and I too feel that the picture fell short in communicating how feminine and charming she looked and had mainly chosen it because I wanted to be done writing that post and couldn't find an appropriate picture so I just picked that one.
Suzie had one other observation about my post that she spoke more on than anything else: the idea that in my story she is set up as the antagonist. Again, she didn't seem wholly displeased by this...just different parts disconcerted & amused by how it feels to read a story that happened in your life from someone else's perspective. However, it had never occurred to me that anyone could see her as an antagonist because that is not how I saw her. Ever. I wanted her to know this. I wanted her to know that I didn't like that picture for her either and that I never saw her as an antagonist in my life.
So I left a comment. On her blog. I commented on her blog. Squeeeeeee!
I told her I was sorry that I hadn't found a better picture to represent her. I told her that I never saw her as an antagonist and that it is funny/interesting that people's reactions to my telling them that Ben was dating someone else when we met are a mixture of raised eyebrows, forward leans and an "oooooh drama, tell me more" type attitude. I told her that's not what it was to me. I told her that to me it was very simple: I met a guy, I liked him, he was dating someone else, so I backed away (not that I had ever been very close). It's not strange really that people react that way because it's human nature...so I usually don't discourage it because I don't like to chastise people for being human even if I think it would be better for them to curb those impulses. I just tell my story and let people react how they will.
I also told her that I was grateful for her presence in Ben's life and that my reasons for that were totally selfish. I told her that I believed that if it had not been for her, Ben and I would not be together. I told her that I needed that "grace period" while they were dating to become comfortable with the idea of even just being friends with someone who was not religious AND that I was attracted to. I told her that I fully believe that if I had not had that "grace period", I would have cut off all ties with Ben due to being freaked out over my attraction to a non-religious, single man. (I had done it before, I'm sure I would have done it again). But seeing as he was not single, I felt safe to be friends with him and as long as I behaved in a way toward him and toward her that I would never feel internally ashamed of, then I was OK. No freaking out. (Funnily enough, she and I had a written conversation just after Ben and I got together about my behavior while they were dating and I've never come away from anything feeling more proud about how two people communicated with one another in the midst of some pretty heavy, and at times negative, emotions. She was a champ. And so was I).
I told her that I always make a point to tell people how she was an important part of our story because she was NOT an antagonist - she was another human being just living out her life and in doing so had a profound effect on my life. And for that, I will be forever grateful. I know that she wasn't intentionally acting in any way to better my life but it doesn't matter. Her existence was enough and that makes me both insanely happy and terrified. I think this was the thing that she was really getting at in her post: that all of our actions, both intentional and unintentional, affect other people. Merely existing and going through our lives has a ripple effect on the world. That is the part that both comforts and scares me...because I want my life to be a boon to others, but I cannot always control how my actions will affect others.
I wish I could quote her post and the comment she left in response to mine - she is a very good writer and seems contemplative and thoughtful - but a quick google search would reveal her identity. So for now all you get is my butchered interpretation of her words. I will tell you that she did say she was glad I commented and was very happy that we are happy (she had also said so in her original post) and that she herself was also very happy in love.
I wanted to write this little interlude before I moved on to the next part of our story. I wanted to write it because I wanted to put it out there for anyone who was thinking otherwise, that Suzie is not an antagonist and while I may not have liked some of the things she said or did, I believe that her presence in our lives was an important factor of how Ben and I ended up together.
After that night at Suzie's apartment where I came to realize that there was something going on between Ben and Suzie, he and I spent very little time together. We continued interacting semi-regularly on MySpace, but no more than he did with any of his other friends. We occasionally hung out but it was never alone and it was very infrequent. My feelings for him became hidden away (although I am sure I told myself that they were subsiding and I was getting over it). There were some awkward moments near the time that Ben and Suzie broke up but I will get into those in Part Seven.
For now I leave you with this photo of us trying to take a picture of ourselves in the pitch black but instead being blinded by my camera phone's flash:
