Boyfriends, Engagements, Weddings and not being single.

 I've kept this blog since 2006 and honestly I wish I had tended to it more the last few years. I truly enjoy reading blogs (yes, I still read them- mostly http://www.runsforcookies.com) and I also appreciate the time capsule they provide. 

I always intend to update on everything and then I never do! I will wrap up my Chicago Marathon Race Recap (a year late) soon, and post that. In the meantime, I am no longer single and that deserves a post all on it's own. 

The trauma of Matt has been long lasting. I still have difficulty meeting new people, feeling safe around men, and for some odd reason, still experience significant fear around answering the front door. It's just hard. I haven't unpacked all of the "whys" especially after ten years. August 2020 was the 10 year anniversary of the day I found out- and today is the 10 year anniversary of the day I found my sweet beagle Charlie! I'm glad to replace a terrible memory with a happy one. 

Scooting back a little further in time here, a year ago August (August 2019), I went on a date with a guy at a local bar. We met for a beer. I had been training for the Chicago Marathon and had run the OakTown Half Marathon that morning. I got my credit card stuck in a gas pump not once but twice that day and went to the date without even showering. I was a hot mess. But I still remember walking up the street and making eye contact with Ben sitting at one of the outdoor high top tables. His face was memorable. 

I had been taking dates to this new little corner bar all summer and the bartender/owner now knows us so well. Because of my crazy day, I had a lot to talk about and my first date with Ben was something along the lines of 4 hours. (Not my record, but pretty good.) He popped into the restroom at some point and the owner Steve came over and commented "this one seems like it's going better than the last one." The last date I had brought there had been this weird skinny climber who kept trying to hold my hands with his cold clammy ones having wholly unearned the privilege. 

Ben and I went out three times the first week- Tomato Alley, Urban Roots Brewery + Tomato Alley again, and I think a baseball or soccer game. Somehow Ben crammed in dates with two other women that week, but had deleted all of his apps by week 2, and was introducing me to his mother and sister after 10 days. 

Frankly, I wasn't prepared to commit that quickly and meeting his family totally freaked me out. I had never met anyone's family before! The visit went just fine though (they had flown in from Arizona randomly) and his sister said at the end of the trip she could see me being her sister in law. Again, this was after 10 days of non-exclusive dating. We were literally out with his sister showing her Sacramento one night and while she was in the restroom Ben was hassling me to be his girlfriend. I refused under those circumstances but later gave it up and committed, I think right after they left. 

Three weeks into dating I got offered a job in Oregon. By that time, I already knew Ben was probably it and declined the offer. I didn't want to leave when we were so new. 

We had dated a month and went to Yosemite for the weekend so I could do a 20 mile training run for the marathon. We had a great time. We never ran out of things to talk about. He was a dreamer, and emotional and supportive. He listened when I talked and was interested in everything about me. He was wonderful. He had traveled some hard roads, collected too many degrees, and had just moved to Sacramento from the Pacific North West. A Chicago boy, he had kind of lived everywhere. I traveled on my own a bit in the fall (Canada, China), until he realized it was part of the deal and he agreed to go backpacking across Poland with me in December. We did Auschwitz, Krakow, Warsaw, and a couple quick stop overs in Oslo and London. New Year's we spent together in London on Primrose Hill, watching the fireworks. 

2020 we went to visit his family for "Chrismukkah" (his family is Jewish, but his mother was raised Cathlolic so there is quite a bit of blending!) and I got to see some of his old haunts in Arizona, where he had done his first undergrad degree. 

We started talking about buying houses around this time and by February, we were ready to go through some open houses. We both fell in love with the first house we walked into, and ended up buying it. We went through half a dozen houses but the first one was the dream house in our budget. Technically I bought the house on my own, but I wouldn't have felt brave enough to do it without his support. I wanted to make the decision together. Home buying was dramatic and our realtor was terrible. Our house needs a new roof and there's probably $15k in repairs that need to be done, but it's a beautiful little piece of earth and I'm grateful for our own space and to not worry about landlords. I'm also so grateful we moved when we did- we moved in March 13th, the day before the Shelter in place order started. I'm so glad, despite all of the terrible things that happened this year that I got to quarantine with Ben. 

Spring and Summer mostly involved working from home and I was really laying the pressure on Ben about getting married. I felt despondent over it. I turned 37 this year, and I had given myself a one year deadline to find a partner and have a baby before it was too late. July was that deadline for me and Ben didn't seem ready at all. I deleted my pinterest boards, cried for weeks and got depressed. I didn't know what to do. I felt like I was mourning the possibility of being a parent, but I didn't want to lose Ben either. 

Our dating anniversary was in August, and... he proposed. I had no idea. Before I had deleted all of those pinterest boards he had found the perfect ring for me, found a photographer and really just did everything I could have thought of to make it special. 

Four days of being engaged we had our date, our photographer and a couple days later I had my dress. We eloped 9 weeks to the day from the day he proposed. We are married now. I am not single. It's the weirdest, wildest ride to me on. I'm so happy! Being with Ben feels natural and like we have always been together. We drive each other nuts, but I'm so lucky. He is a wonderful person and we love each other. 

Our next step is to working on trying to conceive, which so far hasn't been working out. I suppose that's really why I wanted to start writing again. I need a place to capture everything I have been feeling. I hope I can start to do that again! In the meantime- here's to us. 

Angie's Lake Tahoe Wedding

My good friend Angie, who I have known for at least 3-4 years now, and met at the dog park during my low point post-Matt got married Labor Day weekend in Tahoe! I didn't get to be here through much of her planning process, but I recommended some of her vendors to her and helped her find her venue so that was fun to be a part of it in that way! She was so kind to invite me with a plus 1, but I wasn't dating anyone or anything at the time, so I just went solo. Luckily Angie has talked about her friends plenty over the years and I knew a bit about all of the people my age who were there and made some friends! She met her husband on eHarmony right after I moved to Oregon, so I basically missed the entire dating process and I only met him once, right after they started dating, so that was a big bummer. I wish I knew him better! But she loves him and was super happy so I'm happy for them! This was the first wedding I had attended solely as a guest, and not working at all since... 2008 or so? I originally though it was much earlier but I recalled I attended my cousin's wedding in Connecticut in Hartford and Niantic a few years ago, and I think that was the last wedding I attended! It was definitely odd just being a guest, but I enjoyed it!


My wedding gift was a love lock I brought back from Prague, and then hand painted in her wedding colors!

 I dressed in bright colors because that's what Angie loves!

 The cheese table about killed me. I hit my lowest weight on this day and promptly gained like 5 pounds and didn't lose it for like 3 weeks.

 Love giant jenga! But just a note, if you paint the pieces, they get sticky!

 The ceremony was supposed to be by the water... Which is supposed to be where I am standing. This is how much the drought has effected California! All of this should be underwater. The lake was at least 100 yards shy of the ceremony site.

 We might have raided the honeymoon suite....

No Suicide.

 

 

My sister got engaged last fall and it's been... interesting. Planning is in full gear and I don't know. It's just strange adjusting to the idea that she's engaged/getting married. When I think of this sister, I see myself in this moment when I was a teenager:

 

 

I stepped off the school bus, and the bus pulls away. It's fall. The Santa Anas are blowing. It's windy.

These big crunchy brown maple leaves blow right in front of me.

I adjust my back pack and take a couple of steps off the sidewalk and into the street.

There is this huge bang.

Like a car back firing.

I stop. I look all around me, and I don't see anyone. All I can hear is the wind. I can feel it on my skin. Like a blanket it envelopes me.


I take a couple more steps diagonally across the street to my house and I hear it again:

BANG.

I stop.

My whole body just cringes.

It's cold.

I look up the street, looking for the source, but I'm the only one outside. The bus is gone, no one is on the street. The noise seemed like it came from behind the house or from below, but I can't tell where.

I just stand there.

It feels like an eternity.

The wind blows.

The leaves go by.

Finally I lift my feet and walk to the front door.

I push it open and the chimes on the back of the door sing as I slam it shut. I throw my bag down, like I always did, and go about my business.

My sister is in her room, being annoying. As she always was. She was always in there, with the door shut; always mean to me. If she wasn't yelling at me, she was ignoring me. That's all she ever did. Lock me out of the house, punch me in the arm, hide my stuff; that is the story of our entire relationship. There is an 8 year age gap and we have never exactly been close.

I don't think about it again.


Until about ten or twelve years later. When my sister was going through a hard time, trying to start recovering from an addiction. She had gotten into trouble, and this report on her life had been written.

Our whole family had come down to Southern California to support her and we were all at the house, on my dad's back patio passing around this big 50 page report that had been written on her life. My brother says, "Did you read she tried to shoot herself? What was up with that?!" Or something.

My heart stopped cold. "What." It wasn't even a question. I just... knew.

"Yeah, she shot holes in the floor. Are the holes here? Did anyone look for them?" My siblings handed me the report and wandered off to look for the "holes" and left me on the patio in my dad's porch swing, surrounded by my dad's beloved tropical begonia plants. And this... bomb in my hand.

And I started flipping pages. And there it was.

She had gotten a gun. And she didn't know how to use it. And she was going to kill herself. She was done; done with life. She had had a bad relationship with some guy I'd never heard of and she'd decided to shoot herself so she'd gotten a gone from someone, somewhere. But she couldn't figure out how to use it. All she had managed to do was "shoot two holes in the floor of her bedroom floor when she heard her little sister come home from school," and she realized... I realized,

I, Emily at this moment, realized why suicide was a selfish act.

In this report it said she was standing in her bedroom with the gun in her hand, and she had just fired these two rounds into her bedroom floor trying to shoot herself in the head, and she heard me walk through that front door; she heard the chimes sing on the back of our front door, and she realized if she did this, that I would be the one to find her body. And that I would have to deal with that.

And she stopped.

And she put the gun down.

And she walked away.

She was selfless, in that moment.  By choosing not to do it. She protected my childhood by choosing not to do it. By choosing to continue her own suffering, which was so awful, she had only moments before been ready to spray the insides of her cranium all over her bedroom walls- she was instantly paused by that reminder. Emily. Me. A child. I would find her body. She couldn't do it. Because of me. Me. It is the most loving, selfless thing she has ever done for me.

I sat on that patio and I cried, and cried and cried. Because I remembered. I knew that day. I knew that moment. I stood in the street, and I saw the leaves blow by and I heard her fire those shots into the floor. And I am haunted by it. And she has no idea. I never told her. She wasn't there the day we all read the report and we never talked about it. I think it would upset her to talk about it now, but I wish I could.

Every time she emails me about the wedding, this is what I think about.

Standing in the street.

Feeling the wind on my skin.

Listening to my sister shoot a gun into her bedroom floor.

We probably will never be as close as we were that day. But I love her.

Apple Hill & Lake Tahoe in October with Charlie Brown

In October, I went to take Charlie Brown in to the kennel while I went out of town for a wedding and found out that his bordatella vaccine had inexplicably expired, despite the fact I had only owned my dog for 9 months. Apparently,the type of vaccine he had been given (nasal, rather than shot) was only good for six months. Our vet hadn't let us know it had expired. Our boarding facility required he be vaccinated at least 7 days prior to being boarding. I was calling to make the reservation (and finding this all out) like 4 days before I was to leave. Fantastic.

Anyway, the dog couldn't go in the kennel, so I had to find a pet friendly hotel with four days notice. (The whole wedding was planned in 4 weeks FYI).  We found a nice one, and Charlie had some issues with barking in the room and clawing at the back of the door. Oops. I guess he got lonely and anxious. I cleaned up all the teeny tiny pieces of paint chips off the floor, hide the evidence and checked out the day after the wedding! We made one last trip to the shores of Lake Tahoe so he could dip in his toes, and we also stopped at Apple Hill on the way home. That didn't go over so hot. lol It was really crowded and he was REALLY barky. He did like looking at the fish in the pond and he got to smell lots of cool stuff though, I'm sure! We stopped a couple times on the way home and went for short walks to smell the wildness of the woods! He liked that a lot!

Since this trip Charlie has started, and then graduated from kindergarten! I now know that he barks a lot in public because that's how he says "HI!" to people. He acts like a lunatic on a leash because he is sayinh, "HI HI HI HI LOOK AT ME! HI!" When he looks like he wants to kill you, really all he wants to do is be petted, which I never would have guessed. I really thought he was leash aggressive, but the trainer figured out he just has bad greeting manners and was trying to say "Hi" in a sort of rude way. lol As soon as you approach him when he is barking so nasty and mean, he calms right down and hushes right down. I had no idea. He just wants to be petted. That's all he wanted at Apple Hill too. He wanted to say Hi to all the people. I was afraid he was going to go around attacking everyone the way he was lunging and barking, but it's all... nothing. It's just him saying "Howdy Stranger!" Who would have thought that?  Now how to break him of that?! We start Doggie First Grade next week. Hopefully, we can keep working on it.

I was trying to find out Thanksgiving pictures to post, but no luck yet!

He's married?

Watching this wedding video on a videographer's blog. Starts off with a little speech from the FOB (father of the bride) about the bride and how she met the groom and sprung this whole marriage thing on him (the dad), and then it launches into a music sequence of the bride getting her make up on, the groom getting ready, bride ascending the aisle, goofing off with the groom, giggling during their ceremony, hanging out with the bridal party...

And I realize, with this sinking, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach... he already did all that.

Matt and HER... they had their wedding day. They had A WEDDING. He has memories of getting up and getting ready and putting on a suit or a tux and hanging out with "his boys" and marching in and standing in front of everyone, and she walked down the aisle... The took portraits and cut a cake and...

I don't know what to say.

We're back to the surreal, out of body, mind-boggling part of this again. How did this happen. He had been married a little less than two years or so, maybe 18 months when he and I started dating. Those memories were fresh in his mind. Those memories... they were still new when we sat in that sandwich shop and he took the straw wrapper off his drink, tied it around my ring finger and said he would try to contain himself until the next week to propose with a real ring.

He had JUST done that.

For real.

She wore a dress.. he wore a suit... they got married. They danced a first dance... maybe he danced with his mother... And one day he got up and thought... I don't like this, let's start over? And hit the mental "delete" key and deleted ALL of those memories right out of his head. The last four years of his life, five years? He just deleted her, everything about her, his wife and their relationship out of his life and life experiences. POOF. Never happened.

One of the pieces of material I turned over to the investigators was an instant messenger conversation where I asked him how long he has been single. No hesitation. "four and a half years... as long as I have been a cop." No wife mentioned there. He even asked, "define single... do shitty dates count?"  How do you delete an experience from your life as huge as a WEDDING? Especially when you're the freaking GROOM?!

My friend Paige said she couldn't believe that they- Matt and his wife were pretending that he hadn't been in this big serious relationship for HALF of their marriage, that they were going on, having another child like everything was wonderful.

Matt went on pretending with me like he hadn't been married the last two years. He's pretending now that he wasn't in a serious relationship with someone other than his wife for nearly two years, and then, he did the same with me.  The man likes to play pretend, apparently. And so does his wife, I guess, because she ignores it. I've been told repeatedly this is all going to blow up in her face but it's hard to feel sorry for her when I still look at her and see nothing but the life I lost, including, basically, my husband. He was the man I thought would be my husband. I never doubted it from the second I felt that first prompting. And I have had the hardest time shaking that conviction. I have never been more sure of anything in my life. ... And I guess, never more wrong either. How do you feel sorry for someone who has the life you dreamed of, wanted, and thought you would have?

Today, I don't think I have ever felt more strongly that I don't want to be married. Ever.  I don't even feel sad about it right now, as I usually do. I feel... disgusted.

In therapy today I was asked what I wanted to happen with Matt and his job. Every day I have a different answer. Some days I am wracked with guilt and I just want him to [continue to] live (my inner deluded belief is that they are ecstatically happy) in la la land and have nothing come of it, and for all to be well. Some days a letter will suffice. Others, a suspension, paid or unpaid. I dream of his wife's smugness over a paid suspension because then he could be home to help with the baby. A paid vacation! Today I had a new answer for my therapist. I wanted him fired. She asked why. It took me twenty minutes to go through all the ways in which he had personally victimized me through his job and how he could do it to others. A pathological liar on a witness stand? Using your position of authority to gain trust and power in relationships? Using highly personal information, to manipulate someone for your own benefit? How do you put someone like that in a job as high powered as a police officer? He should be fired. He should never be permitted to work in law enforcement again.

That's how I felt today.

I may or may not meet with the investigator tomorrow. I don't feel so sick, just sickly exhausted/tired. I'm actually sleeping at night and my body doesn't know what to make of it. Nothing is nailed down yet so I don't know what's happening.

Wordless Wednesday: Laying down in Traffic

I recently went to Washington DC to photograph a wedding. The night before the big event, the couple and I went to Georgetown to do some portraits to get them out of the way before the wedding and I ended up laying down in the middle of the road with my head in traffic and the bride's sister ended up trying to hold her body out to protect me from being crushed to death, and once I stopped almost-dying to get the shot, the sister took these pictures of me with one of my spare cameras (which was set on manual focus unbeknownst to her, and she didn't know how to change it, lol, but I still think she did very well!). I really appreciate people taking pictures of me when I work because I don't have any record of me during this time of me as a photographer because I'm always behind the camera!

I like this first picture best because I don't look fat. :)

You can also see my hair, which I accidentaly dyed black and then un-dyed by washing my hair with PEROXIDE all day long before this shoot before lightening it to the below color. In the grocery store recently, I found out one of the dyes I used was RECALLED because the wrong dye had been put in the box and mislabeled! :-O

These pants are several sizes too big for me and they are constantly falling off me. So they are always sagging when I lift my arms too high. But they are so comfortable and they always fit right out of the dryer so I always keep them around.

My Wedding: Wordless Wednesday

I've been thinking about this for a few days... This was part of what I lost too. Weddings really aren't so important, and I only wanted a total of 15 people there. (Ok, I am using the term "wanted" loosely, more like minimum number required...)


Empty luscious green pasture, mooing cows, the Marin French Cheese Company of Novato playing hostess- a place where I fed ducks and ate happy meals as a preschooler. Blues, yellows, greens, a custom dress made by Melissa Blackburn of Utah, a sweetheart bust, short lace sleeves, bridal buttons and tea to ballerina length with lots of fabric detailing- pleating, gathers, ruffles. Parisienne macarons in little boxes as favors. Ravenburg or the Sloans would shoot it and David Perry would film it. I had already quoted and budgeted everything.

I had a sketch of the full dress front and back, but I guess I hid it from myself on the computer. Too painful to look at....


The most important thing to me above all things was the ceremony. I wanted all of the emphasis on the ceremony. On the words said. Words said to us, about us and by us. I wanted a fiddle player- not a violinist... there is a piece of music played as the theme of the character "Gus Pike" on Avonlea... a show from the late 80's early 90's based on the books by LM Montgomery. (Best known for Anne of Green Gables). I have loved that piece of music all my life. I wanted to walk down the aisle to that and only that. It would have been incredibly meaningful to me, and that's exactly what I wanted the ceremony to be. Meaningful. About us, committing to each other, for forever. I wanted to treasure that moment and not rush through it. I was so looking forward to holding his hands and looking in his eyes and sharing all of those sentiments and making all of those promises. My whole heart was joyful in anicipation of that moment.


About a week ago I cleaned out the account I had for the wedding and put it towards bills. It wasn't very much anyway. It only hurt a little to do it. Seeing it empty... it just makes me feel empty.

The very first inspiration board is the one I concisely compiled with specific ideas that I planned on using. I had nailed down suppliers for just about everything. Matt told me... when he got his job back, or as soon as he shipped off to FLETC for his training to be an ATF agent and got his life back on track, that we would be back on track. That he wanted to spend his life with me, that I was the only one for him, the only one in his life, the only one he wanted to be with, or would be with, and I was his match. That he loved me.

I believed him.

These are the actual pastures in Novato...