December 27th: Monica: Fox

When I look back at my year, I was blessed with birthdays, family gatherings and personal successes. I had a lot of hope for 2013, as it was the year of my wedding. Not every week has been as magical or glamorous as I had dreamed, but I'll admit I knew I wasn't going to wake up every morning dripping in pearls and rolling around in luxury linens. But a girl can dream, right?

When the year began, I was engaged, planning my wedding, and starting a house hunt. In January, I received my Substance Abuse Counseling license. I was proud to finally have initials after my signature but the license is still in the envelope it came in, and is tucked away somewhere in my overflowing bookshelf. In fact, no one except for me has seen it. So Alex, my now husband, then fiance, and I were living in an apartment that over the past two years had gotten fairly ghetto. We were in a crazed state of purpose and decided it was the perfect time to look for a house. We scoured house after house weighing the pros and cons of each. But in all honesty we rushed the process since we wanted to beat the end of our apartment lease. When we found our dream home, I showed pictures to our dog, Fox, and told him about the big yard he would have for running and playing. He was the baby of our family and my best friend. There's nothing, absolutely nothing, I wouldn't do for my Foxy.

The Tuesday before we closed on our house, I took Fox for a car ride. I had the window down as we drove through neighborhoods and I remember how happy I was to have his soft little body leaning on me as he caught a cool early Spring breeze. The sun shining on his fur made him look especially red. I looked at his smiling face and he looked at mine. And then he just leaped. Two seconds too late, I grabbed the leash and felt his weight at the other end. I felt the thud of his body going underneath my car. I pulled over, picked up his broken body out of the road and carried him to a grassy spot. I put my hand on his chest and whispered words of comfort to him and felt his last heart beats. And then he was gone. Gone and a hole in my heart. It was so cruel and unjust! I lost all my sense of pragmatism and went in to a fit of screaming shock. Alex came and took Fox's body away to his family's ranch to bury him and I went home to pull myself together. But I couldn't. The screams wouldn't stop, the crying couldn't stop. I dragged myself from my closet floor to take a cold shower in the hope that the cold would numb me, but it didn't work. Nothing worked.

The next two weeks I lay in bed listening to Bon Ivers' Skinny Love on repeat. I only knew him four months, but Fox awakened a part of my soul I didn't know existed. I'm crazy in love with Alex and I've even had my heart broken, yet Fox showed me a nurturing love that I never guessed I was capable of. We closed on our house with our heads hung in grief. There was no pride of our accomplishment, no excitement for the future. Before we moved in our furniture I painted our new living room a deep royal blue. The color has not ceased to bring me inexplicable comfort.

Eventually, I had to snap out of my grief and get prepared for our wedding. I had dress fittings, meetings with vendors, invitations...etc. If you've ever been married, you know the never ending errand list and bridal stress that has earned it's way in to the DSM-V. Finally, our wedding day arrived and it was a whirlwind of chaos and magic. Almost everyone complied with my whimsical dreams for my big day and the whole event was more successful than I had hoped. But my happiest moment was the Monday after our wedding, when it was all done and over. I felt the weight of the world lift off my shoulders and I was reborn.

The summer brought exciting adventures and new friends. A close friend of mine rented a party boat for her birthday that was two levels and had a water slide that led straight to the open water. Unfortunately, Alex was sick that weekend so I went stag, but it gave me the chance to reconnect with some old friends from high school. The hostess had stocked the boat with a taco bar and hella alcohol, and by the end of the night we were all passing around a bottle of tequila and doing the Wobble. All hands on deck!

The next few months held fairly predictable summer activities; tanning, swimming, lounging. The last weekend in July, Alex and I took a spontaneous trip to Kerrville, TX, a quaint town in hill country. It was a romantic trip where we hid from our social circle and relaxed together. We had a sunset dinner on the river and hogged the juke box at a saloon. We admired the unfamiliar scenery chock full of character for a couple days before returning home.

We took another trip in October to Colorado Springs after celebrating my 25th birthday. We stayed with friends for a week and enjoyed every day. We saw all the sights; Garden of the Gods, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Cave of the Winds...etc. Every day was an adventure! (By the way, recreational marijuana is now legal in the state of Colorado. *ahem*) The weather was cold and bright which made coming back to the Gulf a nightmare.

Speaking of nightmares, last week my maid of honor lost a close sorority sister. They had gone out for drinks and on her way home, her friend got onto the freeway going the wrong direction and was promptly killed. I spent a weekend with my friend curled up in blankets and pillows on my living room floor. Death affects us all differently and it's never painless. This death reminded me of my grandparents that have passed, in particular, my Mima and her dark eyes that had seen so much. My heart hung heavy for my friends' colossal loss. A true friend's passing is a tremendous calamity, a cold slap of how fragile our reality is and a reminder that every one of our plans are just tiny prayers to Father Time.

I got to spend a lot of precious time with family and friends this year. The beginning was turbulent but as the year went on I accepted the death of my dog and settled into married life. My husband more than makes up for the lack of pearls and glamor. ;) I can only hope next year will bring more moments of love and less loss. And as the late great Socrates once said, “True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”