Dear Bryan,
Did I tell you that I’m scared of brunches now? Before I went to a brunch the day after your surprise wedding, I turned to Kevin and said, “I really hope no one gets married today. I don’t think I could handle it.”
I’m not a person who often turns to alcohol to cope with a huge revelation but I’m also not a person who often goes to surprise birthday brunches that then turn into a wedding. Sitting in the back row of the ceremony in my dirty Converse and crop top, quietly buzzed off vodka and orange juice and getting real nervous about the part of the ceremony where we’d have to handle open flames, I realized how entirely perfect your ceremony was: simple, romantic, everyone still in shock at the elaborate prank you’d just pulled.
It seems impossible that I’ve only known you for three years. The first time I met you was at Haven and Jenna’s party. I was talking about something with work and a videographer and Ally said “Bryan is a videographer” and you turned around and grinned. I don’t remember the second time we met, or how we really became friends. Ally introduced us and then, the next thing I know, we’re slogging up a mountain at Big Schloss and you’re coaching me on the perfect way to cook eggs.
I don’t think I ever told you but, there was this one time one time in college when I was hung up on this guy. And, after things ended with that guy, I felt so low and sad, like my stomach and my ribs and probably even my elbows had been scraped raw. So I called up a different guy, the last guy who’d made me feel that way--sad and vulnerable, like my bones were made of paper--and we went to breakfast and breakfast turned into lunch and lunch turned into falling back into old habits I had hoped I'd outgrown.
Do you ever get that way? When you already feel low but you start looking for something that could make you feel even lower? For years, throughout college and then after, I’d think about that breakfast every time I’d get sad and want to make an impulsive decision. Because I think sometimes when you’re sad, it’s easier to be hurt than to be happy.
After I came back from Costa Rica, everything was so gray and I was so sad and I didn’t want to feel better or fix myself, I just wanted to wallow a bit. I felt myself slipping ever so slightly back towards old habits.
But also I’d come so far in that last year. I didn’t want old habits.
So I called you. And we went rock climbing because if there’s anything that can get my mind off wallowing, it’s my fear of heights, and then to Bob & Edith’s because there’s nothing I love more than a good diner.
And now, whenever I feel scraped raw, either because of a boy or because of work or because of life, when things get dark and I feel lost, I call you up and we make our respective treks to a diner in Crystal City where we both order the veggie omelette and I get a side of pancakes and inevitably we land up debating Buddhism. And sometimes I still make the impulsive decision, the bad one, the one that I know better than to make, but it doesn’t feel like the only option anymore. I’ve got better habits now.
Congrats on your nuptials, Bry. I am so unspeakably happy for you and Lisa and all the adventures you have in your future. Thank you for letting me be a part of them.
Love,
Mads
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