Family

I went to the lake last weekend with my family. It's a tradition with us. We usually go over the Fourth of July weekend and it's always so much fun. We rent a boat and go water skiing and tubing out on the lake and when we're not on the boat we're back at the shelter playing board games and chatting and laughing. We always go to the same spot. We've been doing this for probably ten years now.

We went this last weekend because my cousin Nani's fiance Harry was in town and he'd brought his daughters and we all wanted to meet them, so we packed up and headed down. Harry is British (and he's very attractive just by the way) and his daughters were adorable but very shy. 

As usual, the day at the lake was exciting. I have one cousin (not the one who's engaged) who's only two months older than me so we've always been fairly close and it was great to spend time with her and catch up.

But the whole day, there were nagging thoughts I couldn't get out of my head. If Doricha were a boy, she could have come on this trip. I mean really there's no guarantee of that. But really, if I had been dating someone for a year and a half and my parents liked him and especially if he were LDS, he probably would have been invited along. To get used to family events like this. But she wasn't invited. Because my mom doesn't even know we're dating and my dad is pretending we're not.

And then every ten minutes somebody was fawning over how cute Nani and Harry were. And they were adorable. Everybody's really happy for Nani because she's in her early thirties and this is her first marriage. So it was all, "Aw look at them." The men were making Harry feel welcome while simultaneously razzing him the way that they do with all the fiances before they're husbands.

And I realized that that will never be me.

My family will never fawn over me and Doricha.

Honestly my extended family will probably never know about me and Doricha.

Which makes me sad.

If we were married and I went to visit my family without her, I wouldn't take off my wedding ring. I'm not making a conditional vow. It's not forever and ever except when I'm with my extended family. It's forever and ever period. So it kind of makes me wonder if I would just stop visiting my family.

That would make me sad too.

I have all these grand dreams of what my adult life with Doricha will be like, but then I get down to the practicality of it...it's a lot harder to work out. My extended family will still want to be a part of my life and include me on things. They'll be genuinely concerned for me and want me to be happy. They'll mean well when they try to set me up with people and I won't be able to tell them I'm perfectly happy where I am in life.

They'll want to know why I'm wearing a wedding ring. And I won't laugh it off because why would someone laugh off being married?

I know I have a long time to figure everything out. But I guess what it comes down to is I don't want my family to be ashamed of me. I could be one of those brave people who proudly comes waltzing out of the closet and tells everybody to take it or leave it. But I'm not. I can't do that to my immediate family.

Well, at least it'll be easy to come out to my dad's side. They've all got their own stuff and none of them go to church anymore anyway. I'll fit right in.

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