"You're Insane" my mom gasped as she read over my flight itinerary. "Brutal" Taylor replied when I ran through my weekend plans for the hundredth time. "You are not going to be a real person when you get back to Seattle" Madison empathized Wednesday night as I was packing my bags and triple checking my To-Do and To-Pack lists.
Real person I am not as I find myself five days later, once again at my favorite coffee shop in the city. This time surrounded by water bottles, used tissues, and Emergen-C packets, all testaments to one of the busiest, craziest, and greatest weekends that I have had in a very long time. As I run through the weekends events in my head, the flights, the friends, and the copious amounts of alcohol I consumed, I can't help but think that the sickness that is currently fogging my head and filling my nose is totally one hundred percent worth it. It was all worth it.
It wasn't long after my flight touched down in Austin, Texas on Thursday afternoon that I was cursing Seattle's name for not preparing my abnormally white skin for the Southern summer sun and the 90% humidity that hit me like a brick as I stepped off the plane. It was about five minutes later that I found myself in the airport bar, Corona in one hand, and my dear friend Casey's hand in the other. We talked, laughed, and reminisced as we anxiously awaited more of our friends' arrivals in Austin for a weekend we had all been looking forward to for months. Later that night I looked around the table as 18 of my favorite girls sat down for happy hour and I couldn't help but smile. Though it may have been a year since we were all together, and though our lives have taken us in different directions, to different cities and down different paths, there we were, as if no time had passed at all.
As I stood to make a toast a short while later, emotion overcame me when I realized that this was the first of many of its kind. The first of many college reunions, many wild weekends, and the first one of us to jump head first into love, into life, and into forever. "To Casey" I gushed, holding my glass of wine high. "To her happiness, to her love, and to sending her off right."
Well, "sending her off right" turned out to be an understatement, as we took the term bachelorette party to a whole new level, ravaging our way through Austin's bars, restaurants, and of course, infamous taco stands. At some point between vodka/pickle juice shots and quite the run in with a mechanical bull on the first night, I looked at Casey as she was dancing around the bar (twenty minutes before she retired for the night... at roughly eleven pm) and realized that i've never seen her happier.
"I'm ready" she told me the next morning over a breakfast taco and a coffee. I had just finished telling her how far away from marriage I am, how terrified I am of pregnant women, and how I am still learning how to take care of myself, let alone another person, when she looked at me and said "When you know, you just know and then you just go for it." And while I couldn't be more excited for her, I couldn't have been more thankful that I was not the one wearing the white veil all weekend.
4:30 am came way too soon on Saturday morning as I crept out of the hotel room, leaving behind two of my sleeping roommates and best friends from college. My mind was all over the place as I struggled to keep my eyes open in the airport security line, running on only an hour of sleep. Finding my seat on the plane, I closed my eyes and thanked God that I made my flight. "I can do this" I encouraged myself, right before falling asleep. Four hours later I woke up in Washington.
"You're crazy" Darcy said as she picked me up from the airport in our home town, making fun of my mismatched outfit and terribly dirty hair. I'm not too sure what I said in response, as it most likely wasn't English. But four hours, a long nap, and a thirty minute shower later, I was back in the game, ready to go. Driving through Idaho, (the fourth state I had been in that day) I laughed out loud as I received a few indecipherable texts from the bachelorette party which was still raging on in a boat somewhere on Lake Austin. Though I was sad to leave Texas and unsatisfied with the short amount of time I spent with the girls, those feelings disappeared as I stepped out of the car and into the arms of my best friend from high school.
"Thank you so much for coming" Nicole sighed. And we walked arm and arm toward the cabin, the backyard and the place where her older brother was getting married an hour later. The scenery took my breath away as I signed the guest book, hugging old friends and near-family members. Sitting in the front row next to her family, the family I practically lived with throughout high school, trying to cure my hangover with a cold IPA, and the sun reflecting off the lake, I could not have been happier with my decision to attend the bachelorette party and the wedding. And once again I was overcome with emotion as her brother, my brother walked down the aisle arm and arm with his parents. "Where has the time gone?" I thought to myself as I wiped tears from my face, cursing under my breath for leaving my sunglasses in the car. The ceremony continued on and continued to be absolutely, undeniably, incredible. I found myself making eye contact with my dear friend Nicole midway through the ceremony, and as she mouthed to me "thank you, I love you" once again, I knew I had never been in a more perfect place.
Many tears, many glasses of red wine, a few stuffed mushrooms, and a double chocolate cake shot later, I found myself on the dance floor. As "Brown Eyed Girl" played and one of the groomsmen did the ever-so-popular "shopping cart" move next to me, the rain started to fall. Slowly at first, and then in huge drops, causing the band to unplug and sending many people running for shelter in the cabin. Somewhere in the madness I ended up in the bed of a red truck dancing with the grooms father as the rain pelted me, soaking my pink dress and melting away the last of the make-up that my tears had missed earlier. Fast forward an hour, a dance party in the kitchen, and more red wine (that I really didn't need), and I was in the red truck once again. This time, hand in hand with the owner of the truck who was one of the groom's good friends from college. Nicole was in the back seat with his roommate, and the four of us were toasting. Toasting to the newlyweds, to the fact that we are still all single, and to the country music that was blaring from the speakers of the red truck, keeping everyone in the cabin and in the tents a few yards away awake.
In the morning while I gathered my belongings, my shoes that had gone missing midway through the reception, and embarrassingly tried to explain to everyone in the lake cabin that the neon pink "party" sweat pants I was wearing, were a result of a glitch in my "To-Pack" list, I spotted the newly married couple as they emerged from their master suite hand-in-hand. "They were ready." I thought to myself. "They just knew". And on the drive back across the state to the west side and to my bed (which had never sounded better), I thought a lot about the weekends events. I thought about the future bachelorette parties, the weddings, the children, and I thought about the passing of time. As I sat in silence, trying to imagine my own bachelorette party, my wedding, my kids (eek!), I realized that i've got time. Time to be young, time to do insane things like fly across the country and back in 36 hours, time to find myself in a big red truck in the pouring rain, cuddling with a perfect stranger, and time to run myself into the ground, not caring about consequences or the repercussions on my tired body. I've got So much time.
And though I may not be a real person right now, tomorrow is a new day, and with it comes more time, the hope of a clearer head and less runny nose, and the notion that it is all, always worth it.
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