my love hate relationship…

with facebook. part of me thinks it is great to see all these people that i used to go to school with, or worked with, or havent technically met. but the other part of me wants nothing to do with it. i have been in a mopey mood all day and i think i just figured out why. facebook did it! so far i have friends from college (mostly sorority sisters) my family and current and past co-workers oh and a few bloggy friends. but last night someone friended me who i never thought would a.)have a facebook page and b.) post pictures. at first i was really excited to see her, then i looked at her pictures and saw her trip to the east coast, with two of my closest friends whom i haven’t seen in over two years. they were in new jersey, i am in connecticut. and that is where and when i really started to get blue. i have tried so hard to keep in contact with everyone i left behind, but we all get busy in our lives. so here i am, in connecticut, engaged to the most wonderful man in the world, and i have no friends to share with. not meaning i have no friends, i have met some of the greatest people in my various jobs during the past five years. fantastic people that i consider great friends, but they are not the friends “that knew you when…” i look at all types of different wedding sites trying to get an idea for ours, and i see all the bridesmaids, in my mind, the bridesmaids are life long friends, the ones you made in high school and college who have been through thick and thin. i had that at one time but that was the same time i was convinced i was NEVER getting married. clearly things change. i do not even know if it is right or wrong to invite or not invite all these people from my past, they were so important and i miss them dearly and i have no idea what to do. after a few tears last night kevin asked me if i wanted him to write to all of them and tell them how upset i was , what a great guy! so facebook, at times you can be like crack and at times you just make me sad.

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cause for concern,

my dear dear friend mags. the first time i met mags was second semester freshman year of college. i had just had my tonsils out and she had just transferred from a community college in chicago. i was making my rounds of the fourth floor, when amanda and i went to see sarah and her new roommate. they were both unpacking their things and moving the furniture around. just as sarah said hi to me and started to introduce me to mags, mags started jumping around the room screeching. she had just found a pregnancy test from the previous tenant. used mind you. it hurt for me to smile let alone screech but that was when i met mags. from that point on we were pretty much attached at the hip. we both had a love for dave matthews, she was impressed that i knew all the words to “ants marching.” i was impressed with her amazing red hair! her family was practically off the boat irish immigrants from chicago, the one thing that made me doubt it for just a minute was that her dad was not a cop (but have no fear, her sister works for the fire department). that first semester was a difficult one, but through it all i had mags and she had me, and we were able to make it work. that summer we both went home, me to kalamazoo and her to chicago but we kept in touch with incredibly long phone calls and lots of letters, remember those? i could not get back to school fast enough and sophomore year we were roommates. we lived through the wrath that was molly giddly, the nazi ra. and manged good grades and the ability to rely solely on each other, whether it was monitoring the use of the bathroom when the water main broke or how to remove puffy paint from the desks (if anyone is curious, we just stripped the desks and refinished them-we also spackled and then repainted the closet door because of all the holes from the dart board) mags went home again that summer, but i stayed near school. that summer was our first dave concert and a great “sorority retreat” and i use the term retreat very loosely. junior year was a blur because we had both declared majors. senior year we rented a house. when we graduated, we had certainly made a mark and were so ready for so much more. mags was a bio major and wanted to “play” with big cats, instead she met tony at a factory job she had landed from a temp service. he was nice and clearly doted on her from the beginning. they started dating, then mags got a job in kalamazoo. she moved out in feb or march i don’t remember, i was going through some crazy crap at the time and really could not handle any type of change, but all through that and beyond it, mags kept me together. shortly after i moved back to kalamazoo and we were able to spend more time together, still tony was in the picture. he was fun to hang out with, but at this point he had stopped working and showed no ambition to work again. his main source of income was his mother (more on her later) and trading various car parts. he had practically moved in with mags and exposed his patterns. a year or so later mags finds out he is a dad, something he denied until he was forced to take a paternity test. i was with mags that night, she was devastated, and drunk. very. very drunk. another year goes by and tony has not changed, but they had moved into a bigger house. mags knew they would get married, just not sure when, and always had a nagging feeling in her gut that she didn’t really share, she didn’t have to with me. i ended up moving out to ct. i knew mags and i would still keep in contact, we had before, but something changed. she would still say how things were going, but she seemed to try to keep the relationship conversations very short and not at all detailed. i found out she was engaged by an email she sent to her whole address book, and to make matters worse her story about the engagement left a lot to the imagination. she said that tony just handed her the ring, she had to make him ask the question. i was still hurt that i had to find out from an email. they were engaged for a long time and the wedding plans ran the gamut from getting married in the church maggie grew up in (for the record tony would not step foot in a church and his mother couldn’t possibly travel all the way to chicago) to getting married on a beach on lake michigan. mags asked me to be the maid of honor and any one of those choices would have been fine, but i always told her not to sell herself short, she deserved to walk down and aisle and wear a beautiful dress. they settled on getting married at the house that mags grew up in, her parents were going to sell it, the house had been in the family since her father was a child. they set a date and made the right plans. i had my plane ticket out there. a small side step, i was supposed to go to the wedding with my ex boyfriend, two nights before we were to get on a plane he looked at me and said he didn’t love me. i needed mags as much as she needed me. that little tidbit made me not the best brides maid. the ceremony was presided over by a justice of the peace, mags mom had forced mags to wear a white dress and it was just family and close friends. well mags’ family and close friends, tonys overbearing mom and step dad and tonys kid were there. tonys mom i think had been dreaming of this day for years! considering she had every single tacky wedding kitsch ever invented and some that i think she made herself. mags didn’t pick colors, or what flowers she wanted, the cake cutter was this plastic (i hate to say it) white trash monstrosity complete with fake babys breath accents and pens that when you clicked them they said “i do” and various other wedding related lines, but most of them were malfunctioning and would get stuck in between phrases. it was a nice setting, very small and it was great to see her family, but i was probably a bad drunk at some point in the evening, i think it was when tonys mom had to go to the hospital for some “illness” and i may or may not have said something along the lines of well that doesn’t surprise me, how on earth could she go an entire day without being the center of attention. whoops. that was two years ago. i haven’t heard as much from mags, she is working like a dog, of course, she pays all the bills, the mortgage is in her name and who knows how many other things. i think tonys disability check still goes to his mom. is that weird? we would still keep in touch, talk once every other month but not nearly as much as before. then last weekend i saw a missed call from mags. she never calls at that time of night and didn’t leave a message, i grew concerned that something had happened to her parents. that family has known its fair share of tragedy, mags closest bother died before i met her when he was only 30 or so, then the next oldest brother died of a drug overdose. i sent her a quick email the next day saying hi and hoping all is well. she sent me back an email that i was stunned to get. in a nut shell she said all of the things she thought she could just live with tony are starting to turn out that she can’t, she wants to leave but is scared to make a huge mistake. after i picked my jaw up off the desk i just emailed her back that whatever she does i will support he 100% and that i loved her. this is one of those huge life altering events that i feel i need to be there for her and i am not. i got to talk to her on saturday and it was the depressed mags from the nights when she was talking about her brother, but something was different, i think it was she is in a place that she does not want to be in. part of me feels so bad for her and another part of me realized that i am in a great place right now. maybe i should just bring her out here. she said she was 95% ready to walk out the door, but then she also said it is so much easier to talk that way when tony is not right in front of her. there is nothing i can do, but wait for her to call. she has always been there for me and i will always be there for her. it is just crazy to think that we are now at this age… well she is a few years older than me… but still this is all very adult.

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