blunt Talk

Greetings Celerians,

This afternoon, I spent time reading all of the cards and letters I received from you during my difficult journey. Every time I read them, I am touched, and I cherish the beautiful gifts and flowers I received. As I pray over all the cards each week, I ask God to bless all of you, for blessing me.

I have to be sort of careful what I say here. I like a few of these people. A few.

Hey guys!! Bernie the Goldendoodle here.

You’ll never guess what? I have my very own pine tree inside the house. I’m not sure why there’s no pinecones to eat underneath it like there usually is, but.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never tried to hide the fact that I believe fall is the superior season. So much so, that I’ve always said my “new year” starts in September. The air just smells different. The way the light hits things is different. The world changes color for no good reason but to be beautiful, and I love it.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't have birthdays. I've never been a fan. But clearly it's not a perfect world. I know that because I don't live on the Amalfi coast, The Shape of Water stole all the Oscars from The Greatest Showman, and I have 3 forehead wrinkles currently.

"I can't have kids, now what?" was one of the top search terms bringing people to Celery and the City. Although I have several posts about my own infertility journey, I have never written directly to those struggling with this question— a question with which I wrestled for a quite sometime. But I am happy to tell you that I am now at a place of complete peace and acceptance. 

You are color. Your biggest fear is living a normal life. A stifled life. A boring life. A 9-5, fluorescent filled, gray cubicle life. The kind of security the average suburbian dreams of is your slow poison. And so is the thought of being average. It brings you to the edge of insanity even more so than the thought of settling.

If you're confused as to why I'm even writing about something so personal as infertility or weird health problems, I can only assume we aren't real life friends. And also, you have never read any of my blogs before. So, let me introduce myself. I'm Brit, and I'm about to talk about my uterus now, ok? 

My mom's photo albums are so ugly. I mean, they are basically a bunch of photos clinging onto black construction paper with those jenky - now yellowish - photo corners. You know the ones.

This is a very important blog for me to write because I see so many people living miserable lives and I used to be one of them. My people-pleasing-empathetic tendencies held me captive most of my life - committing to things I didn't want to do, staying in relationships and jobs longer than I should have, silencing my thoughts for fear of hurting someone's feelings.

I feel uniquely qualified to write this blog, and not just because I just finished watching Dirty Dancing for the 7,294th time. And actually, I lied. Not about Dirty Dancing - I would never do that - but about being uniquely qualified. I'm no more qualified to write this than my neighbor, or my mom, or that guy walking his dog in front of my window, or you.

It's currently 10 am on Monday and I'm sitting in my sweats, wearing a charcoal face mask, catching up on Modern Family and shoveling chocolate chips in my mouth. Could substitute Monday for: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.

{Que scary movie narrator guy voice} Have you or someone you love been the victim of intellectual property theft? Well, then you're among friends. I suggest you read part 1 of my personal saga here: Catfished: That Girl Who Tried To Be Me Then Got Her Site Shut Down, Whoops! 

I had never met anyone before who could eat a box of mint chip ice cream in one sitting... besides myself. Granted, I didn't usually do it at midnight and fall asleep, mid-chew, while sitting in complete darkness on the living room floor.

Before things get crazy here and you start turning in your ID badges, did you subject yourself to last week's reality check - 5 Realities Of Self Employment: Is It For You? Ok, well can you take care of that real quick while I roll my eyes?

It was just a typical Tuesday night in April that ended up with me calling my best friend in a fury of hysteria after writing my dad's eulogy. I'd like the preface this by saying I don't normally write premature eulogies.

Our story begins just like any other, with me eating grape popsicles on a rainy Midwestern afternoon and receiving an email that made me blow a gasket.

 "Hey, just thought you'd like to know this person's Instagram (we'll call her Catty) account seems to have a lot of your posts..."

Every year since I've been blogging (which was way before Celery and the City), I have done a birthday post. And no, it's not quite my birthday so you can spare me the lukewarm sentiments.

Last week my dad started eating ice cream with his butter knife because he was too impatient to wait for a spoon. I said, "Dad, you could hurt your tongue, just wait," to which he replied, "It's no big deal; last week I ate my yogurt with a screwdriver." My dad is a retired electrical contractor, in case you might be wondering why he has screwdrivers, just, around. Anyway, that isn't what this blog is about. 

I'm currently sitting on a plane leaving sunny Houston for snowy Chicago. To my right, is a lady immersed in a riveting game of Candy Crush and currently paying $5.50 for a $.29 Cup of Noodles. Translation: she's paying $5.50 for styrofoam cup of freeze dried gluten, sodium, and chemicals mixed with hot, dirty airplane water.

As with everything I write, this is unfortunately garnered from my actual experience. When I first started telling people what was going on, I was met with a buffet of unsolicited advice and insensitive comments about infertility - as outlined below.

This is the continuation of my previous post Here's Why I Can't Have Kids. You Can Stop Asking Now. And you really need to read that if you're gonna read this. I don't ask much of you, so can you just not be the worst and read it already? 

For those of you who don't know - I'm a wedding photographer. That also explains why this time of the year, I can't blog very much because I'm busy blogging over on my Indigo Photography site.

So maybe I had a stage five freakout at the stroke of my thirtieth birthday, but after the swollen eyes and hysteria subsided, I was actually rather okay about leaving my 20s behind in the dusty cloud of uncertainty that they were. I had just gotten married and it seemed life was kind of coming together, not that I ever needed it to, but it was a nice surprise. I mean, for a surprise. Cus, eew.

I was never the girl who had grand dreams about my wedding. There was that brief time in my early twenties where I was obsessed with bridal magazines, but judging by the accordion folders full of invitation samples, I think it was just more of an obsession with stationary. And markedly, the start of my fascination with fonts. 

I was born an innocent and trusting child. But somehow, somewhere, everything got all jacked up. And I don't have daddy issues. Or mommy issues. So you can shelve that hypothesis. As an eternal pessimist, I am particularly mesmerized by the messiness of life. And mine has been pretty messy. I

Passion is the bane of my existence. It tortures and taunts me, fuels and sustains me, awakening the best parts of myself. And as much as I hate it, it's the fierce madness that drives me.