new beginnings, part I

so, this is generally the reason i wanted to start writing again.

two big things happened this week.

my b-fri from high school got married to her partner; my best pal in chicago moved to vegas for a second city mainstage. this second part will come later.
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i've known chrissy since i was fourteen. after our glory days of catholic high school, we (and several of our high school friends - around 20 of us) have kept in very close contact through the years. through college, through moves, through sickness and health. we've always had a perfect way of relating, and our friends always seemed to be ahead-of-the-times i felt, having a lot of (mostly) innocent fun and growing up together in a wonder-years kind of way.

chrissy - she's always been smart, fun-loving, goofy, kind as all get out, and amazing in general. she luckily found someone to match all those great things in her in her partner of nine years, tracy, probably one of my favorite people on the planet.

the wedding was one of the best i've ever been to. unbearably classy, sleek lines, both in simple baby pink jcrew wedding gowns, while we wore a chocolate brown. they were glowing with happiness. tracy's family is amazingly supportive - consisting of a proactive mother, her lovely sister, and father - a real guy's guy that came around to the idea through the years. chrissy's family is old school cath italian - and though they've struggled with what everything means, and tried to make sense of it through the years - they actually came to the wedding and saw their daughter begin a marriage to an amazing woman. (in mass, gay marriage is currently legal.)

because of all this, this past weekend was a real emotional minefield. everything seemed at the surface, just under the skin, but not necessarily in only the sad ways. chrissy and tracy were glowing, and so was i. it's pretty neat to see any of your close friends get married and grow together with someone else, but it's exceptionally impressive and inspiring to see people that have faced some molehills climb onward to continue a relationship that truly makes them better people together.

also because of this, i feel like a failure.
okay, okay - too much, but can we talk about this?
throughout the weekend, there was so much to do. we were in boston, and we got a packet of things we could spend some time on while we weren't doing wedding stuff. we took a trolley tour downtown, we walked around quaint parts of town; 6 of us met up with two inspiring teachers from our high school that live in providence-ish for tapas lunch and heard about their lives. we dug in tracy's mom's garden, planting flowers and mulching, getting ready for the ceremony. maybe best of all, we went kayaking one morning on the charles river, watching turtles bask in the sun as we got little tan lines ourselves.

every picture hanging of chris&trace was so interesting - tracy, as a river guide in the grand canyon, chrissy playing some random sport. alone or with friends, smiling, laughing, doing bits. if you were strangers with these two people at the start of the wedding, you would have known them completely in one weekend's time.

for this reason, i feel like i have to be a more active participant in my life. believe me, i get that repeating what i do sounds really interesting. and, it is. and, i'm blessed. but, there is something to be said for really getting out there and LIVING, being in the world, digging and rafting, sporting and laughing. so, i'm going to try harder to marry my two worlds like they have.

see what i did there with marry?
see what i did?
oof.

this is the most serious i'll ever be. i'm just all inspired and sh*t.