Marshmellow Fluff

I am a fancily guarded person.  Which means I have the ability to look intriguing from afar but up close, my need to be liked works against me.  My overwhelming desire to be your friend, shrouded by my, “I hope she likes me” inner voice, makes me come off as distant.  I’m too busy worrying about what I look like to you up close, if my breath smells like coffee or if I look too fat in my outfit to be deemed “friend worthy.”  To add to that trouble, my relaxed face is a bitch face.  I discovered this early on, after it became clear that my face is a magnet for drunk men from all over, to approach me in bars with an alcohol-stenched whispery voice and say things like, “Smile…it can’t be that bad.”  So there you have it, I am a stink faced insecure person with an ego the size of one of those jawbreakers you begged your parents to buy you at the arcade, even though, “you couldn’t possibly ever eat that entire thing, it is as big as your head!”

But even with this working against me, I managed to acquire some pretty amazing friends, and soon, they will do me the honor of spending far too much money on a dress they will never wear again, and will be my bridetourage (because who wants to be called a maid).  Where some brides obsess over who to have in the wedding, my decision was easy, partially because I worked full-time during my 7 year commuter-campus college career, so I didn’t have 12 girls from the sorority, who lived off lettuce and salsa to sift through, but mostly because, like I said earlier, I am fancily guarded.  I choose relationships carefully believing it more important to have a few close friends, than to be a “Tom on Facebook”.  The friendship I have with my 4 bridesmaids has been cultivated over many years, through experiences as simple as trips to Starbucks before work, to more complicated experiences like, sleeping together on hard wood floors in sleeping bags, when I was going through a painful breakup.  My friends have held my hair and they’ve held my hand.  They’ve moved away and back and then away again.  They’ve put up with my OCD and my sarcasm and understand that sometimes I come off as sharp but never mean to be.  They’ve talked me through breakups, they’ve watched me fall in and out of love.  They’ve believed in me, even when they didn’t understand me, and they have been there when I needed them. And because I am getting married in my thirties, I’ve watched some of them become wives….and mothers.   But most importantly, I know we are on this journey together, that no matter the miles that separate us today or tomorrow…we will pick up right where we left off because they will always be like home to me.