An engagement shoot to FALL for.

After my mom left to go back home to California, I immediately started counting down the days until it was time for me to go back myself for Christmas. (Down to 43 now.) I had an embarrassingly hard time after she left, as you can clearly see from my last Blog post, but in the days that ensued I began to glue myself back together.

It's true what they say about difficulties making you stronger as a person. I definitely have started feeling like The Hulk himself lately. And I'm thankful for the strength that comes just when you think you can't take it anymore. Turns out I can take it. Turns out I'm stronger than I thought.

Up and down went the roller coaster...

After picking myself up, dusting myself off, and realizing that life isn't as hard as my hormone-infused mind was trying to lead me to believe, Jason and I got our engagement photos taken. Even writing those words I kind of look at the screen like, what? That really happened?

It really happened.

Sometimes I think that I wished for this love so hard that on some level maybe I convinced myself I wanted it too much. Maybe I convinced myself that that kind of fairytale just wasn't in the cards for me. A love so big your eyes can't even stretch wide enough to see it all. That's the kind of love I have.

I don't want to come off brag-y. I never want that. I want to rejoice and show thanks for the beautiful things in my life, but I don't want to talk about them with that ever-present "neener-neener-neener" mentality. I just love him. I didn't know he existed. I didn't know a journey like the one I'm on would ever be real for me. And I have to just keep pinching myself.

I was in love before. Or so I thought. What I'm coming to wonder is that maybe I did love the person, but I was in love with the idea of that person more than the person himself. I drove myself (and probably him, too) crazy with this desire. And when I finally began to let him go, I focused on me. I focused on what I love - music, fashion, writing, reading, Netflix binging. Then I went to a party and Jason was there and we played guitar together until 2 AM and the rest, as they say, is history.

He's my best friend. AND my soul mate. I don't say that nonchalantly because I have another best friend/soul mate who is really more of my sister and I've known her since I was 5. She's also going to be my Maid of Honor. Jason is my best friend in the way that I always wanted my future husband to be. Someone who I can make laugh and someone who makes me laugh. Someone who I can fight with and make up with. Someone I can talk to and cry to and who talks and cries to me. Someone who puts up with my mood swings, going back and forth between our moving here being the best and worst decision I've ever made. (But mostly the best.) Someone who looks at me in a way that still gives me butterflies. Someone who makes me feel safe and at home and completely complete.

Someone I am going to be proud to call my husband in exactly 634 days.

'Til next time.

Xoxo,

Gossip Girl

(just kidding)