it's felt like a long evening. even on a school night. i guess it's cuz i went out and did something after work and then came home, all before it was even dark. i didn't even move quickly, really. i went over to the other end of the neighborhood where there are stores (we're more of a restaurant area... just so many restaurants) to try to do some shopping before this wedding i'm going to this weekend. i'm gonna be my friend's plus 1! i've never been a plus 1! i was supposed to be KW's plus 1 this past december for his old work partner, but we had the flu and had to cancel 😢. but i'm gonna go visit my friend MM! and see a bunch of other people who live in the area, hopefully! i'm excited! and getting over a cold, so also hopefully my plans do indeed go through.
anyway, i was unsuccessful. i do have a backup dress to wear but after re-gaining the meager weight i lost last year, it's a bit of a tight fit in the torso. were i to attempt to dance, my range of motion would be very limited. but i suppose it'll have to do, i'm unwilling to really drop dollars on a dress that i intend not to fit in for long.
seriously, i need to lose the weight. i'm also going to be my friend OV's bridesmaid in september, so... i really wanna be looking better for that, before all the photos go in albums, digital and otherwise. ...do people actually do physical albums anymore, for anything? never mind. point is, my body will be immortalized against my will by participating in this event. i'd like it to be thinner then.
this is all very besides the point. not that there's ever much point here other than my absolute rambling.
anyway, it got me thinking about a couple things. one, how gorgeous emma stone is. it's not fair. and that hair color works beautifully on her, i wonder if i could pull off anything like that. two, how gorgeous penn badgley is. it is also very unfair.
and yet, there's something about his facial structure that actually really really reminds me of KW. sort of always has. and i always thought a lot of that was from the old gossip girl days when he played a hipster writer living in brooklyn. like, come on. that was KW's bit in high school, so of course that description rang a bell. totally different coloring, but the bone structure in adulthood is actually very very similar. i wonder if other people see it. then again, given penn badgley's current infamous role, maybe i don't want people thinking KW looks like him.
so i was browsing through pics i have of KW on my phone, trying to assess how real the similarity is, and i found a picture — a picture of a picture, actually, since KW never did forward the pics along to me — of me, KW, his sister, and his two young nieces (who were about 3 and just about a year old at the time) up at a vacation house his sister had rented and invited us to visit. and i love it. it's objectively unflattering of me but it's one of those cases where i don't care? everyone looks so happy, and i just... love that i'm involved. i love that i'm included.
i really felt that this year, over the holidays, how much i love feeling like i'm part of KW's family. i've been trying to figure out (not actively, just kind of passively) for a while if i really do want to marry KW or if i just feel like it's The Thing To Do At This Stage Of Dating, and... i honestly don't have an answer to that. do i want to get married, or am i just attending a wedding this year? do i want to get married, or am i just watching my friends get engaged? do i want to get married, or am i just 30 and insecure about my progression in life?
i don't know, i really don't. but i do think a major weight on the pro-marriage scale is wanting the legitimacy of ceremony to lend stability to the feeling of belonging in KW's family. i don't want to feel like a visitor. i've been given a temporary role in someone's family before, and i know i'm the one that ended it. but this feels different, and i'm not sure why. i don't think it's that i'm more comfortable in KW's family, because i felt absolutely comfortable in being myself with ZM's family. maybe part of the difference is that i actually really like KW's sister and want to feel close with her, whereas i always felt (and still do) that ZM's brother is kind of... an ass? like, not meanspirited, just... not someone i would particularly voluntarily choose to spend time with. not that ZM's brother ever made me feel unwelcome, but i was also never concerned with impressing him. but KW's sister really seems to want me to feel welcome. and i absolutely treasure it.
i also think about the girls, and i remember my cousin B, who's i think 12 years older than me, i remember her boyfriends when i was young, i remember them appearing at a christmas or two or three or even four, and then disappearing, and then there'd be a new one later. i know that's part of life, but... something about that has really stuck with me. i always think, "will i be a Brad to this kid?" if i'm not a permanent fixture, what will they remember about me years later, when i'm gone? will i be a faint memory of someone their uncle KW used to date? and he is Uncle K to them... will i ever be Aunt A? or just A? i suppose it doesn't matter, but i do wonder what the line is there. if KW and i get married, will i be permanent enough to get a familial title?
i keep being intentional about phrasing it as feeling like a part of KW's family, not as being a part of KW's family, in part i guess because i don't want to... get ahead of myself, or let myself trust in something and then lose it later. or i don't know. i don't want to be presumptuous. but i'd really like to trust in it. i'd really like a family. even with the family politics and drama that everyone's got to some extent, which i've been a third party observer to for years now, getting closer and closer looks... i'd willingly shoulder that, for a chance to feel at home.
