I now pronounce you...

Clinically insane.

As a single gal at my age, it's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that so many friends and/or people I know are married/engaged. I mean honestly, what's your rush?
You don't know at 19 that you've found "the one." You aren't even old enough to drink alcohol legally (in the U.S.), what makes you think that you found the person you want to spend the rest of your life with? Teenagers are all about indecision -- teenage girls change their clothes at least 3 times a day. And you think you can be loyal to someone for 60+ years? Silly.
Maybe I'm just a cynic. Or maybe I just don't understand? I would like to poll all those friends of mine, and every other engaged or married couple between the ages of 18 and 20, and see how many listen to Taylor Swift/podunk love songs, watch romantic comedies, and who have "be kissed in the rain" on their bucket list. Maybe then I'd have a better understanding of what they feel?
Perhaps I missed out on the l-o-v-e gene.
It's probably genetic. My parents marriage story proves this. To summarize:
Mom married Dad's best friend, with Dad as the best man. Had a son, got divorced. Mom started seeing Dad. Dad fought with Mom, packed a plastic garbage bag, went to live with his Mom. Got back together. Repeat. Repeat. Dad moves out. Dad asks Mom to marry him. She says she'll think about it. Dad invites her camping. They duke out terms and conditions to the marriage (move to Idaho, etc). You can fill in the gaps after that point. It's probably not an accurate portrayal of what happened, but then at least the story is interesting.
So I may be considered a cynical bitch. But I'm proudly not delusional. I wasn't brain washed into believing there's always a happy ending, a "Prince Charming" to come in and sweep you off your feet. My life isn't defined by a chick-flick, or the notion that if I'm single I'm going to end up in a van down by the river.
Stop complaining and fearing the single life. It's not bad.
Not bad at all.

Status

Yesterday marked the 21st anniversary of my brother's evacuation from my mom's womb. As such, it was my duty as younger sister to drive designated-like across town and back so he could consume his alcohol with his friends after consuming it with family.

It was a good night.

Suffice to say, one of the highlights of the evening was dinner with the family at Buffalo Wild Wings. As the only one under 21, I settled on a coke. Drinks varied around the table from a pinot gregio, blue moon, bud weiser, and a jack and coke (my brother couldn't just have blue moon). Hilarity ensued when my brother, distracted with eating his ribs like a dog who hasn't eaten in a month, appeared unfazed by my dad's hand in his tray. He was stealing fries.

Stories passed around the table. How my brother and I NEVER got along as kids, mispronounced words and common mistakes we've all made, my mom scaring people, the Rapture, etc.

This somehow led to split topics -- The Winter War was the conversation for the men at the table; for the ladies it was how one day I'm going to write a book detailing every experience of my life and how I have to wait until my mom dies to publish it for risk of embarassing her.

But I thought to myself, why wait? Why not start now with the simplest of written forms -- my blog? So from now on I will be outlining my past as if I were writing my book; someday I'll copy and paste a book together from it, if  I survive the third predicted rapture that is.

*Survived Y2K, bird flue, swine flue, west nile, Rapture 1, Rapture 2*

Redirecting

I take solace in the fact some things never change.

The weather is always unpredictable, as are our fates, but there are those constants worth having -- friends, family, and a place to call home.

I've stopped looking.

I've stopped looking at the events going on around me; stopped looking at others and drawing comparisons. Redirecting -- trying to be less negative, even though it's always been in my nature to be that way.
It's time to just live in the moment.
Time to redirect and adjust.

Time

It just seems to slip away.
One minute you're lost in the mundane tasks of the everyday, and then all of a sudden you're pelted with the bricks of reality. You're knocked out of the state of being unaware to the life going on around you, and tossed into the awareness that life's not fair.
It'll never work.
You wont be happy.
It's too hard.
Why bother taking a chance when all it will accomplish is failure and unhappiness?
Why open ourselves to a world of hurt when we can bask blissfully in the inattention?
It's understandable to believe that if you don't try no pain will come of it. But isn't that where the pain begins -- In that you never even tried? Does pain begin to occur because what we've done, or what we haven't done?
So many regrets...

You try to close yourself off to the world around you so that you don't feel the suffering that haunts us like a cloud. Walls and barriers are our shelter, protecting us from the sorrow. But when that one leak happens, the whole fortress comes tumbling down and you're left a blubbering mess trying to piece back some semblance of what you used to have.

We can look back on ourselves our whole lives wondering "what if," and "why didn't I." The questions we should ask though, are "why not," and "why can't I."
I often go back and try to pinpoint the moment where things start to change and things fall apart, and usually it's recognizable. The tell-tale signs are there, and I've become so attuned to those moments the pain never really hits because I'm already prepared.
But why can't it work, just once?
Will I always be the person who destroys my own happiness?
Or will people always continue to stomp on my hope of the future until I eventually give up?

I wish I could change time.