It has to be because I went to what was arguably the best wedding of my life this past weekend that I am now having wedding anxiety. Last night, I dreamt that I met all three of my bridesmaids for lunch. While we’re sitting around a table and eating, I announce to them that I’ve decided to call the wedding off. As their faces change from smiles to total confusion, I take out a sheet of paper with a list of at least ten to fifteen different reasons for why we’re no longer getting married. A few reasons on this list include that we’re no longer communicating, we’re not open about our feelings, Chris is having an affair with some woman in Sydney, and we’re no longer having sexual relations with one another. My friends have no verbal response, but their faces say it all.

I woke up and told Chris about my dream, and he said my subconscious is going crazy. Yes, it certainly is.

I am having Paris and wedding anxiety. In a few days, we will be leaving for Paris for Chris’s cousin’s wedding. I had a dream last night that I had packed everything for the wedding and our trip… except for my DSLR. That would be so upsetting since the last time I was in Paris, I had a silly point-and-shoot camera, and the quality of the photos was nowhere as good as my basic DSLR’s photos. I can’t imagine going anywhere for a trip and not bringing my DSLR. All other photos just seem so inferior since I got this camera.

Then, I saw myself at a zoo in Paris with Chris and all the people on our food tour from Sunday. Somewhere along the route, we ran into Chris’s ex-girlfriend, who is Eastern European. They chatted on their own for a while, and suddenly, they left all of us and went off on their own hand in hand. I was abandoned in Paris with a group of people I just met because my fiance decided to leave me for his ex. One person in the food tour commented that maybe after going to the Georgian restaurant on the food tour, Chris realized how much he missed the ex and decided to act on his impulses then and there.

A colleague and I went out to lunch today, and we were chatting about our relationships with our parents and how we oftentimes feel guilty. Of course, this colleague is a woman because it seems that only women are programmed to feel guilt when it comes to parents from what I have heard. She explained to me that because her mother never had a formal education (just like mine), she felt like there were a lot of things she just could not understand or appreciate because of it. “I don’t know what to call that,” my colleague said. “I know it sounds terrible, but it’s like I like cultural things, and she just lacks culture?”

It does sound terrible, but I could really relate to what she was saying. As another friend and I recently discussed, one of the reasons that my own parents cannot appreciate what you gain and learn from travel, whether it’s domestic or international, is that they don’t understand how or why it would be beneficial for one’s life. To them, it is a way to brag that you are rich and have money and can afford to travel. What’s there to learn while traveling? Why would it be important to learn about cultures other than one’s own, to be familiar with other languages and customs in other places, or to see how people different from yourself live life? These concepts are foreign to my parents, and they don’t see how it can benefit someone. But these beliefs are theirs because they’ve never been really exposed to other people in large droves who do appreciate these things and understand what the value is, and frankly, you are more likely to be exposed to this if you are around people who went to college, got degrees, and perhaps even did higher levels of education. My parents’ lack of education is partly the reason they think the way they do about little luxuries and international travel. They’ve never had friends or colleagues who have embraced these things, so that didn’t help, either. Our peers really influence the choices that we can make.

My mom never had the opportunity to go to college. She never had a formal education in Vietnam, and when she came here, she got the equivalent of a high school degree and started working right away because she had no other choice… well, other than to bear the wrath of my grandmother, who hated her because she was Vietnamese and not Chinese. My dad could have finished college, but he never liked school and was never that good at it, so he didn’t. I’ve had privileges that my parents never had, and I’m grateful for it. I wish they would be able to see that my life choices in travel are not wasteful and a sunk cost in terms of money spent. But I can never teach them why travel is a good thing and not just a selfish, flaunting thing to do. Only experience can teach them that.

My sleep schedule is screwed. I can’t seem to sleep at a regular hour for myself unless I’ve sedated myself with whiskey before bed. Last night, I slept well, but I kept waking up every hour or two to see what time it was. The only other time in my life I’ve had sleep like this was in the days after Ed passed away. For an entire week, I couldn’t sleep through the night and would wake up several times, dead alert. The night before last, I slept through most of the night, but still felt too sluggish at 6am to go to the gym.

I was at lunch with one of my colleagues and told her I was taking a whiskey shot before bed to sleep, and she suggested I take a melatonin supplement. What scares me about taking a supplement even if it is supposedly all natural is that I will get addicted to it. I can’t really get addicted to whiskey before bed, right?