Weddings and Things...

This is certainly all dragging out a lot longer than I had expected, but I hope you will be patient and bare with us.
After several meaningful talks between Nathan and myself, we announced our engagement in September 2005. Even though emotionally and physically speaking I was not well a lot of the time, Nathan asked me to marry him anyway. We were thrust into wedding plans and a ten month long engagement that never seemed to end.
Oh what a strange engagement it was, for Nathan especially! I had no idea how to communicate with him properly, for some reason I thought I had no choice but to agree with him on everything. Than I would feel resentment and become incredibly internal for days, till he finally told me "to come out from under the bed" so to speak and talk to him about the things that were bothering me.
While I felt that our engagement was the right thing for me to do, I struggled deeply within myself to be excited and happy about our forthcoming wedding. Since I was an expert at pretending by then, I kept smiling and telling everyone that "yes, it is VERY exciting...yes Nathan IS a wonderful man...Yes, we couldn't be MORE perfect for each other." And on and on and on. I felt a lot of pressure from other areas to be a certain way, I never knew who I really was anymore.
One day....about 2 months before the wedding, I told Nathan that I didn't want to get married after all. I called my mother and told her the wedding was off and that I didn't know what I would do with all the invitations that had already been sent out. Nathan was devastated, but in his calm manner, he took what I said and went for a drive. I remember the worst part for me was seeing the tears in his eyes as he drove away. I felt terrible for hurting him so badly, but I thought this would be the best. To save Nathan from me, and he would thank me later. I hated how he could see through my charades and "tough girl" act. I hated how he could call my bluff and completely see through me when I wouldn't tell him the truth about how I was feeling. AND....I was scared at that point that babies might not be in the cards for me because of what the docs were starting to say. I thought Nathan would be better off with someone that had a perfect little uterus and could give him 20 children if he wanted that.
BUT...I loved the safety and security that seemed to be awaiting me when I was with Nathan. As wonderful as Nathan was, I was waiting for the day when I would have to "pay him back" for all the amazing things that he had been in my life. Oh, that was frustrating for Nathan, to have to reassure me every single time that he did something for me that he wasn't out for anything except to win my love. His patience and persistent nudging that we were meant to be did win out in the end and the wedding date remained.
Often, we talk about the groom being the one with the cold feet on their wedding day, not at this wedding! I went through all the motions of getting ready that morning, May 6,2006. Every few minutes I was having second thoughts and all I wanted to do was run away and hide. Rehearsal had been hard, I dragged myself down the aisle and fled as soon as it was over and collapsed in tears on the front porch of the beautiful building.
We did have a beautiful wedding though, with 200 family and friends in attendance. People told me I was beautiful and that I was a lucky girl. Blessings and kind words were heaped on our heads. Hugs and kisses all around. It was a party in the true sense of the word, and it was a lovely spring day.
My siblings cried when I left in the limo that evening with Nathan, we were all so incredibly attached to each other and I think we still are. The funny thing is, that whole day, I didn't shed a single tear. Everything felt like it was just speeding by and I was just going along with it. Although I knew that marrying Nathan was the right thing for us, I just couldn't feel anywhere that it was the right thing for us. Such is a classic symptom of depression and I came to recognize it as such.
We had a beautiful honeymoon and the funniest thing of all was, around the third or fourth day, we were both miserable because we missed our families! We looked at each other and couldn't believe how homesick we were! Nathan and I both expressed our feeling of being homesick and when it was out in the open everything was fine. It was the first of a thousand conversations that I would learn to be honest about my emotions to Nathan.