From Love Song to Country Song

Aaaand...

That's a pretty good intro for what I'm going to write about today.  A week or two ago, I had the sudden realization that over the last six-seven months, my life has made a complete reversal from a love song to a country song.  Let me explain, from the beginning.

The ring...if I had only known what
it was going to cost me...

One week in July of last year, I was talking to the girl who was, at the time, my best friend.  Her name is Camille, and we had known each other for close to two years.  We had a great relationship, despite living across the country from each other.  Anyway, back to that week.  We had been talking about getting engaged the next time we saw each other, and I had the crazy idea that she should fly to see me that weekend.  We talked, I found tickets, she arranged rides and things, and she came here to visit me in Provo.  By the end of the weekend, I had given her a ring, she had asked me to marry her, and everything was better than it had expected.  The rest of the summer was a dream.  She was doing well (I thought) and so was I. My classes started out well, I loved my calling (organist for my LDS ward, fyi), I was where I wanted to be, and I was at a new level of contentment and happiness in my life.  Not everything was perfect, but that hardly seemed to matter. Until it ended.

One of our engagement pictures.
They are painful reminders, true,
but also *really* good pictures

I guess it's fitting that the time of my life should end spectacularly, and boy did my life not disappoint.  I'll be brief about the breakup; most of the details are between Camille and I and no one else.  A few weeks before Thanksgiving, we were having (I thought) minor issues, the natural kind from being separated for a long time.  We made up as best we could and were both excited for Thanksgiving, when we had plans to spend a whole week together.  Then, practically overnight, happiness ended.  For reasons that are still unclear to me, she called me right before the break and told me that it was over between us.  Looking back on it, I can see little things, things I was willing to forgive and ignore for the relationship's sake.  Maybe those should have tipped me off, told me something deeper was wrong, but I still don't see how, after considerable thought.  She says it was nothing I did, or rather nothing I could have done would have changed it, but that doesn't help much of anything, really.  It was such a shock that it's taken two months to get to where I can even talk about it like this.


Then life got creative.

Random picture for aesthetics.

So, just a week later, I went home to my parents in Idaho, since my Thanksgiving plans had been cancelled, and my car died on the way home.  I had to wait in the cold for a tow truck to come and tow me the last 200 miles.  When I was finally home, I had to completely replace the radiator.  The rest of Thanksgiving week was, honestly, very depressing; under the circumstances nothing could have changed that.  To top it all off, at the end of the week I had to run my mom to the emergency room at two in the morning.  She was suffering insupportable head pain that wouldn't let her sleep and didn't respond well to painkillers.  Fortunately, the doctors were able to take care of her (mostly), and she suffered no lasting ill-effects from what was wrong, but it was a very long night, and very trying on both of us, me for worrying, her for being in pain, and both of us for missing a night of sleep.  It was around 5 when we finally got home.

The very next week, there were three individual family tragedies spread throughout my family.  All were very personal, not the kinds of things to share on a blog.  

Probably because of all the stress, I've spent most of this winter sick in one way or another.  Finals went poorly, probably because of the other stress I was under, and as a result my grades weren't what I expected them to be. (Okay, fine, so they weren't bad, per se, but...)  Also, my parents told me that Max, my little dog, is too old to keep going and might be put down soon. And finally, my grandma had surgery on her knee, which led to severe complications.  I'm not sure how she is doing right now, I think she's on the mend, but for a while it was very bad and we thought we would lose her.

So, it's been pretty bad.  Not all of it has happened to me, true, but sometimes it's worse when it happens to someone else, someone you care about.  Worrying about losing someone when there's nothing you can do hurts.  Especially with the bitter taste of having lost someone still on your tongue.

So, to recap:  My fiancée left me.  My car died.  Mom's sick.  Grandma's sick.  And my dog is dying.

I'm living in a country song.  At least I can still laugh about it.