2014

By mid-2014 we were still living without a basement. I was waking up at 4am so that I could get into the bathroom to get ready for work before The Italian had to wake up. Nobody was acknowledging the loss of my beloved cd’s, books and other items, and The Italian’s mother was still intruding at every opportunity. I kept telling myself that it was temporary and that we’d be out of this house and neighbourhood and living our best life as a happy couple in no time.

The Italian’s children would visit on occasion. The boy child would not stay overnight because he had developed anxiety whenever he strayed more than 10 feet from his mommy and the girl child would only do so when it would benefit her in some way.

At this point the children weren’t treating me badly or well and, to be honest, I didn’t really think about them until I had to. They were only in my life when they came to visit and when they left, I didn’t give them a second thought.

Right around this time, The Italian and I started talking about marriage. I never really wanted to be married, it was never an ultimate dream for me. When my friends and I played wedding when we were kids, I was always a guest – never the bride. And when I went to weddings and it came time to catch the bouquet, I was always in the ladies room or elsewhere. However… after hearing all the stories about the whore and how she cheated her way through life, I quickly saw the value in keeping what was mine – legally. I knew that if anything had happened to The Italian, no matter how long we’d been together, the whore would try to claim any part of his estate for her children. So, in the fall of 2014, in front of my family, The Italian proposed and I said yes.

Now, I understand that people see weddings as a celebration of love, blah blah blah and they say the flowery words to one another expressing their everlasting love – so much cringe just thinking about it. But I see the legal contract side of it all. Two people stand up in front of their family/friends/witnesses and a judge or some other officiant, and they say some words that legally bind themselves to each other. I only wanted to go to City Hall with whichever guests wanted to show up, lunch at a restaurant nearby, and then off to a sunny destination for the honeymoon. Two of my family had other ideas of how the wedding of the only girl in the family should go and let’s just say that my vision wasn’t what they had in mind. So… most of the first few months of 2015 were spent planning a wedding that my mother and brother wanted.