Unexpected lifevests

So I really didn't realize how much faith I had lost in people or how much I had shut myself off from them until my wedding recently.  Since I lost a job, friend, easy in-law family relationship, and car in the same day, I have been in self-preservation mode.  I spent a couple of months swimming blindly, trying to figure out how I got there and how in the world to move on.  Most of all, I was so angry with myself for, once again, ignoring all the signs and instilling my faith in a person who would never be capable of understanding the gesture.  I did this a lot during child- and teenager-hood and thought I had learned enough lessons for the rest of the trip, but I slipped up again.  And this mistake cost me a lot more.  Because my boss was my friend, someone I saw as a mentor, and my fiance's uncle.  A man whom even my fiance had warned me about.  But I wanted to pull for the underdog, to prove that he was an honorable man.

Needless to say, my rose colored glasses blocked out the shadows.  I got depressed.  I got mad.  And then I got a therapist.  Thank the good grits for Leslie.  She sweetly took me in and worked with me on refocusing my energies so that, when June 18th rolled around, all I could do was bask in the happy things.  I ignored the uninvited guests who showed up and knocked my hand aside to force vice-grip hugs on me.  And I felt myself bob back up to the surface between the arms of my two friends who had come such a long way to be with me.  I had thought my friends wouldn't come.  Not that I would have blamed them.  They all lived out of town, and I had been a recluse for so long.  But there they were, smiling and beautiful.  There to save me.

Carmen drove 14 hours to be with me.  We had only seen each other once in the last 10 years, but she was still my friend and drove across three states to pull me out of the water.  She even came early and wanted to help make chair covers.

Carly left her boyfriend, who she hardly gets to see any more with her grad school schedule a state away, to come laugh with me.  And she invited us over to her parents' house for dinner the night before the wedding to celebrate.  We sat around laughing and eating and talking about our years together and apart, and they saved me.

They stayed with me while I got ready and long into the night.  When I left for my honeymoon, I couldn't stop crying, because I didn't want to leave them.  And I didn't want them to leave me.

To my friends who did so much more than come to my wedding - you brought back my faith in people. In life.  Thank you from the bottom of this little heart that loves you so.