I’m having a bad day today. Nothing “bad” actually happened, per se, but I felt this overwhelming sense of loneliness when I woke up, and throughout the day, even when I had people around me, I felt so lonely. Even though I can be quite outgoing and from the outset seem to be an extravert, I actually think I’m more of an introverted person naturally. I’m usually very comfortable being alone, thinking about my surroundings and life in general. I like doing things that people do when they are alone: reading, organizing, perusing recipes and researching ingredients for a next dish, scrapbooking. These are one-person activities generally. But today, all of this annoys me. I don’t really want to do any of this, but at the same time, I don’t really feel like going out of my way to speak to someone or anyone. Today is just a dissatisfying day because of my mood. The 90-plus degree weather, for whatever reason, did not help it. I just want to sleep today.

Last night, I dreamt that Ed and I were in line to go into a small room one by one, and he went into the room first. He stayed in there for about ten minutes and came out. What’s going on in there? Well, I found out that we’re all in line to meet with God. God is sitting in that room waiting for each of us to come inside, and he asks each of us the exact same question. The question is: What day do you think you will die?

Ed explains this all to me when he exited the room. “So what did you respond with when he asked that?” I ask him. He looks at me plainly. “July 22, 2013,” he replies. I felt sick immediately, and I ask him why he said that date. Why that date in particular? “Take it back,” I say to him sternly. “Tell him it won’t be that date!” He continues to look at me without much expression on his face, and he doesn’t respond. I get frustrated. “I don’t want to go in there,” I said, beginning to feel angry. “I don’t want to hear that question, and I don’t want to answer it.” He still says nothing.

Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about what day I would die. I was fixated on the fact that Ed decided that he would die on July 22, 2013. I didn’t want it to be true, even if that date is already over two years ago. Even in my dreams, I don’t want to believe it.

Sometimes, I really hate reality. I hate the fact that he is gone. I’m not saying life would be perfect for him or for me if he were still here. In fact, his life probably would still be miserable if he were still with us. But I hate thinking about the fact that my brother is dead. Today is just one of those difficult days.

Tonight, before the show we were planning to see in the theater district, Chris and I spent some time browsing at Kinokuniya bookstore right across the street from Bryant Park. I hadn’t browsed in a bookstore in what felt like ages, so it was nice to skim a bunch of different books, from topics on business, travel, fiction, memoir, tidying, and even the kids’ section. I jotted down a number of titles that piqued my interest to read reviews about and consider reading, but funny enough, one book that really caught my attention was a children’s book called In My Heart: A Book of Feelings. The book has a big heart cut out from the center of it, and as you flip the pages, the heart becomes smaller and smaller. Each page describes a different emotion and why one would feel this way. I was so struck by the descriptions and the general heart depiction and how creative it was that I immediately noted it down as a potential gift for young parents.

As adults today, a large chunk of society struggles with showing their feelings, whether it’s physically or emotionally or mentally. It’s really sad. I realized that a large majority of my friends struggle to be really open with me about their feelings, whether it’s about things they think about on their own, or even if it’s around my brother’s death. When I messaged a friend earlier today that I was really touched by her generous donation to my AFSP donor drive, instead of making a personalized comment about my feelings or Ed’s life, she simply responded, “It’s a great cause.” Why are we so removed from feeling as adults — aren’t we supposed to be mature enough now to just feel? Is it because we were never taught these things growing up? Was it because it needed to be taught, to allow our feelings to be expressed and to be expressive in general?

It’s so frustrating. How do I meet and befriend people who can just be real with me and say it as they feel it?

I really hate my teeth. And I know I’ve had a lukewarm-to-hate relationship with them because ever since I can remember, I’ve always had nightmares about my teeth. I’ve had dreams ranging from teeth being loose (as an adult, which clearly is not good), teeth falling out, teeth chipping and cracking, to teeth just dangling from what looks like a string to my gums. Last night, I had a dream that when I took out my mouth guard (for teeth grinding), what also came out with them were some of my teeth. What remained in my upper bite were a few teeth dangling from my gums, threatening to fall out.

When I used to read dream dictionaries as a teen (yes, I really did this), the interpretation for teeth problems in dreams was that the dreamer was lying, and the teeth falling out was like a warning for the person to stop the fibbing. I don’t really have much to lie about right now, so that doesn’t seem like a very accurate interpretation, so I’m pretty sure this has to do with the fact that I’m painfully aware that a) I grind my teeth at night, b) I have a loose baby tooth in my mouth that is probably going to come out in the next couple of years), and c) I have sensitivity all over my freaking teeth.

Now, I can only dream of what it would be like to eat really cold food without having to strategically place it in my mouth and chew it a certain way. And I have to keep hard, crunchy foods on the left side of my mouth. These are not supposed to be problems of someone six months shy of 30.

My mom was so desperate to find out who paid for Friday night’s family dinner that she had to call me from the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses during one of her preaching outings with a worshiping friend. She couldn’t even wait until she got home to call me. She tried to delay it a lot by asking things like who actually showed up, what we ordered, how long we were out. And of course, the standard question finally came, “So who paid the bill?” I told her that my cousin paid the majority of it, my cousin’s wife’s sister paid a small portion, and I paid the rest. Then she annoyingly asked, “Russell didn’t pay the whole bill?” And then “Ellen and her husband didn’t even offer?” Notice how those questions are framed: in a negative, why-did-it-end-up-this-way-and-why-did-you-have-to-pay-at-all? – type way. It’s always negative, and it’s always as though she or I have been slighted. I didn’t feel slighted. I expected to pay a portion of the bill. I don’t like visitors paying unless they are staying for an extended time. She still doesn’t seem to understand this concept, so I have to reiterate it to her. Over and over again. My friend suggested to me to not tell her at all the result because it simply just does not matter (which it really doesn’t, and I agree), but I have a feeling that would result in far more nagging than I can tolerate.

I always knew that at some point, I’d probably butt heads with at least one or both of my parents-in-law. It couldn’t always be so bright and shiny, right? I couldn’t always see them as so great and warm and practically perfect. Something had to go wrong at some point. And how fitting that that “some point” has to be during wedding planning.

My mother-in-law had the brilliant idea to check to see what wedding invitation printing would cost in Chennai during her trip there to visit her mother, and given how expensive it is here overall despite discount codes and even my cousin’s employee credit for a high quality printing company, we decided to take her up on her offer because it would still be pretty expensive. However, doing this required my mother-in-law to be the “middle woman,” and me to write extremely detailed notes regarding what I was looking for regarding everything from font types for certain text, actual invitation and insert card text, envelope and invitation paper colors, to actual design. I wrote instructions on everything from font type for headers versus font type for regular text, to even the actual punctuation marks and how I wanted them to look. I thought I was doing her a favor for being so detail-oriented because that’s what she requested. And somehow, this backfired on me.

I guess my “details” weren’t received very well because there were mistakes made from missing or added punctuation, wrong header font, to even a missing word, which ended up driving me crazy today when I saw the finished (and fully printed – all 105 of them) product. I went back three times to look at the final wording I sent, and I just couldn’t understand how it was not printed like what I wrote to the T. It was very explicit — how did this go wrong? The most frustrating part about it was I actually caught a typo on the actual invitation days ago, and I pointed it out over Whatsapp to her. She got defensive and was very hesitant to call the printer to ask them to make that one small adjustment. I kept going on and on about it, insisting it needed to be fixed, and finally she relented on that one change. With the new typo I discovered today, not only did she say it was not possible at this point to change, but she actually went ahead and said that the text on the insert was exactly as I wrote in the e-mail — I was flabbergasted. Now, I was a liar?

Since the mistake is on the insert card, I’m not as concerned about it and will very likely let it go, but it’s more the principle of it that annoys me. I was asked to give very detailed instructions on what I wanted. I did that. And in the end, not only is it not followed, but I’m told it *was* followed and there are insinuations around my being overly anal and accusatory. And this is coming from someone who I thought was anal (this is someone who followed me around her kitchen every Christmas the last three years, wiping up tiny droplets of water or batter bits I’d leave behind on her kitchen counter within seconds after they’d appeared. Hey, I was going to wipe them up at the end of my cooking, but what can I do when someone else is hell-bent on it being done straight away?). Chris’s dad was not helping in this matter as he insisted the errors were not a big deal, but he only brought up the errors that I had already stated I was willing to gloss over.

Anyone who knows me at all knows I am extremely attentive to detail, and when I give instructions, I want it followed exactly. I’d do the same if I had a job as important as writing out someone’s wedding invitations. In fact, when I created my best friend’s bridal shower invitations, I re-read the text over 15 times before I actually hit “Submit” and purchased them. I read the text forwards, backwards, then forwards again, and finally caught a mistake probably the tenth or eleventh time I re-read it. That’s the kind of personality I am when I am dealing with anything writing related. I need someone who is almost as diligent as I am in that regard, otherwise, I rather just do all this myself, which I’ve mostly been doing since the beginning of wedding planning.

And the rest of the stationery for our wedding, whether it’s ceremony programs or menus or even the seating cards — I will be doing all of that myself. If I really want it done right, I will need to do this myself.

My cousin’s cousin who lives in Montreal contacted me today and let me know that she and her family (she has four kids and a husband) are all coming down for vacation to New York beginning tomorrow through Sunday, and they’d like to see me and my cousin in Brooklyn for a meal. I was happy to hear from her even though she’s quite distant family, and I wasn’t able to see her when I was in Montreal last summer. I told my mom she was coming, and as is the typical way my mother reacts when she hears someone is in town, she starts freaking out immediately over the possibility that I could be paying for the dinner bill. How is it that this is the very first thing she has to comment on when I tell her my cousin’s cousin is in town?! She also made sure to ask why she was even coming to town. Well, this may be hard to believe, but they want to actually… vacation in New York City. Is that so shocking?

“I don’t know if you realize this, but you have a wedding coming up, and it’s going to be very expensive, so you shouldn’t be paying for her and her entire family to eat, especially if your cousin and his wife come,” my mom admonished me for the second time (yes, she called me a second time later this evening to tell me again, because clearly I wasn’t really listening the first time we spoke when I left work). “I know you. You’re always so generous. So generous. You always want to pay for everyone.” I do? I didn’t realize that…

“I’m not going to pay for everyone!” I tried to control the volume of my voice. “Stop acting crazy and worrying about something so dumb.”

I also didn’t realize I had a wedding coming up. That is mine. That I have to pay for. Well, that just completely slipped my mind.

So all those thoughts I had yesterday of missing my parents, well, those are gone now. Can you guess why?