First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage...

My sister is getting married next month. She is happy and in love, so that makes me happy --and I may be getting another neice/nephew from her sometime next year, but shhhh don't tell anyone:).

I haven't been to many weddings, but I absolutely love them. I am a pretty empathetic person. I feel for people in their pain and happiness, no matter who you are--criminal and victim alike-sounds corny, but it's true. I get very emotional (maybe even a tear or two) when watching the news or life moments on reality shows (I know, I'm a punk). So, when I see a couple that is truly in love I become extremely happy, I mean why not, love is a beautiful thing. There's not enough of it in this world anyway. When I say truly in love, I mean so much so that their love for eachother and the happiness they feel just radiates from their bodies and it makes it difficult for those who are around them not to feel that vibe. I am probably alone in saying this but, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes had me believing in love again. Obviously I do not know these people personally, but I got this "truly in love" vibe from them when they were being over saturated in the news. I am also an avid viewer of the TLC reality shows, APerfect Proposal, A Wedding Story, and A Baby Story. These events -- i.e., proposals, weddings, and pregnancies, [if you are unfamiliar with these reality shows]-- are things that I equate with happiness in life.

My career means alot to me, but when I look ahead at what I want for myself, I see a loving marriage and children-a happy, somewhat functional, family. That means more to me than anything, mainly because I did not have what you would call a "normal" or "functional" family. It worked for us, out of necessity, but I did not have an ideal upbringing. I have almost been in denial about this because I don't want to scare away the already commitment wary dudes I meet. It even kind of scares me. I have always been the unconventialist, tomboy, liberal, semi- feminist, of my family. I am different than everyone else in many ways. That is my role--to be different. I am entering an unconvential career of photojournalism, which frightens most of my family because they think I will be broke--which is probably true, but at least I'll be happy, right? I barely dated in high school so the fam has never had a chance to torture my dates or boyfriends. I've had and still have my "situations" while in college, but have yet to bring home a strapping young gentleman to meet the family. Since these moments have never occured I am actually looking forward to the day that I can bring him home to meet my family and my dad can talk computers with him and my mom can probe into his life with her nosy questions. So it's kind of crazy to discover that I am in fact very old-fashioned and not that different at all.