Wow, so much has happened since the last time I blogged here. Little did I know at the time that 5 months to the day that I wrote that last blog I would be meeting my future husband. And especially didnt know that 7 months after that would be married and 3 months after that would be going to school again and living 13,000 miles from home. I think it is safe to say a lot has happened in a year! Check out pictures of the wedding on my profile! So lets recap quickly. My husband's name is Todd. I am now Brittney Hallowell. He is 27, I am 21 years old now. We just had our 5 month anniversary! Yay for us! My little sister also got married, so it was a very busy year for my parents planning weddings. Im very sorry to them for that. We moved at the beginning of December to Texas from Ohio. I am still pretty homesick but not nearly as bad as I was. It does help when it is in the 60s here and in single digits in Ohio though. I really miss my family. And I really miss my puppy too. I gave Kaysa back b/c she was just destroying the house and it was best for her, and last January I got a little Maltese named Zeus. A big name for such a little dog, but he fits it well. He has the personality the size of the ruler of Olympus! He is an absolute white fluffball of terror and energy, but he is the sweetest creature God ever created. He wants nothing more than to be close and show you that he loves you. That truly is the only emotion he is capable of. Eternal love. I think I cuddled him too much when he was a baby. Unfortunatly with our busy schedules and lack of $500 for a pet deposit, we had to leave him with my parents in Ohio. Originally it was just for the time being, but my parents have grown to love him so much and I think actually depend on him, that Im not sure I could take him away from them when it comes time we could bring him down. We will see.

Anyway, our schedules keep us incredibly busy. I work in San Antonio which is an hour away from Seguin. I currently am a temp at Bank of America, but hopefully they will be hiring me on soon. Its your average 8-5 Mon through Fri job, but I really enjoy it, and Im good at what I do. I also go to school in the evenings for Massage Therapy, and hopefully next January I will be finished and able to start practicing. School is Mon, Tues and Thurs from 6-10 so I generally get home at 11. Enough time to clean up, kiss the hubby, and go to sleep to start all over. Todd has a busy schedule too. He is in school at Texas Lutheran U for Psychology, so as you can imagine he has plenty of class time and plenty of studying! He also works part time as a delivery driver for Lowes, and he is working with the soccer team daily to be ready for tryouts in the fall. We also attend Oak Hills church in San Antonio and go to a Young Marrieds Bible study there on Sundays.

We run ourselves ragged, and have little time for each other, but the little time we have we try to spend together and make the best of it. The first year of marriage is not easy by any means, and I would never recommend a schedule like this for any other newlywed couple. But with God's help we are making the best of things and we are growing together through suffering I suppose.

I must admit though, it is very overwhelming. I feel as though Im in a constant state of adjusting. I wish things were more set in stone and solid, but unfortunately they are not. So, Im taking it one day at a time, and hoping this next year will go by like last year did, and soon things will be easier... I hope.

Yes, I am still struggling with depression and a general state of discontent which is why I am resorting back to blogging. I have a lot going on in my mind, and I can only dump so much on Todd. I know he wants to be a good husband and wants me to tell him everything, but there are a lot of things that he cant provide answers for or cant help me with. Many times I just need to get it out. I dont need someone worrying more about me b/c of the possibly morbid way I sometimes think.  A lot of times I just need to sort through my thoughts. They tend to get jumbled in my head and writing about them seems to help them flow into a coherant train of thought. It helps make everything more bearable. Sometimes life just isnt. Im terrified of antidepressants though. I was close to going on them once, but a good friend of mine died b/c of taking them, and ever since then I just cant bring myself to take them. A big part of me thinks that I should be able to just overcome this, or that prayer and meditating and God's help alone should "cure" me and make me happy. I dont know what to do. I dont want drugs to make me a different person. I just want to enjoy life on my own. And man when I have highs I am really really high on life, but anything can flip that switch and then I am so low. It worries me, b/c when Im like that I feel like Im making Todd miserable, even if Im not, I feel like I am. And I want more than anything to make him happy. So in those times I wish for his sake that we'd never got married and he wouldnt have a psycho wife to take care of. But then there are days like today where I am so thankful for him in my life and I wouldnt change I single thing. Really, I feel like 2 people. 2 very different people all fighting for inhabitance of my body.

Speaking of trying to overcome, I cant remember if I ever told you about my trichotillomania. I doubt it b/c I always tried to hide it b/c I thought it was weird and disgusting and it made me disgusting but I couldnt stop doing it. It was about a year ago that Todd found out I pull out my eyelashes and although he didnt mean to, he really embarrassed me about it and made me feel even more badly about it than I previously had. No one wants to pull out their eyelashes, or for some people eyebrows or head hair, or even body hair. For me, I stuck to eyelashes. That is just how the disorder affected me. I started doing it very mildly around 16. Butterfly kisses were always my thing b/c I had very long eyelashes. In fact, more people complimented me on my eyelashes than anything else. It was around 18 or 19 that it got really bad. Eventually I had pulled out every eyelash on my eyes and I couldnt stop. I wanted desperately to, but couldnt. It is constantly on my mind. I get this overwhleming urge and I cant suppress it until I have "found the hair". But afterwards I feel so awful and dirty and weird that Im worse off. Its kind of like people with eating disorders. They get into a cycle where they do something to try making themselves feel better but in the end send themselves further downhill. Thats me with with my trich. And I had tried EVERYTHING! Wearing goggles at home, wearing gloves, sitting on my hands, you name it! Problem is it takes 2 seconds to pull out a lash and 2 months to grow it back, so the odds of saving a lash is slim. Even when Todd teasingly told me he wouldnt marry someone without eyelashes and I took him seriously I couldnt stop. And trust me, that was real motivation there, b/c I figured he "must" find me as disgusting as I find myself and why WOULD he want to marry someone like that, so I tried so hard to make myself "beautiful" for our wedding day, but I still could not stop reaching up to my eyes. I had just about given up a few weeks ago, when I was on a trichotillomania website and they were talking about the new big "treatment" in Britain is Kava Kava herbs. So I looked into Kava and found out its really an amazing drug on paper. A completely natural antidepressant and there were numerous success stories. So I ordered some, and much to my disbelief, the very first day I took it I felt a difference.  I went 3 days in a row without pulling out ONE hair! Its been years since Ive accomplished that! Its been over a week now and I admit I have pulled out 2 or 3 lashes in that time period, but that is such a big change from how I was before and its getting easier for me. So, hopefully in another 6 weeks or so I will have long beautiful lashes again. And even though I know I will battle this the rest of my life, hopefully I will be able to keep up the good work.

Im learning to cook... slowly but surely.

 My mom is coming to visit next weekend! Im so excited! But Im nervous that Ill miss her like I did when we first moved again and it will be all the harder. I miss getting to hug my parents. I took that for granted when I lived there. Same as I took for granted all the little things they did that were so big. Pulling down my bed at night or making sure I had water, makin breakfast in the morning and hanging up my clothes the way I like them, keeping the house clean and making it a beautiful place for us, making sure my oil was changed and getting gas for me if they saw I was running low. If we were out of milk and I wanted cereal I never had to ask them, one of them would just go get it. Most of the time I didnt even want them to go get it, they just did it. They are the most self-sacrificing people I know, and I feel so spoiled b/c I didnt realize how much they did and how much they said in all those small things. Im sure it wasnt a big deal to them to do any of those things, but is such a big deal to me now. I was always a good kid-- a great kid compared to most teenagers-- but I was nowhere near good enough to them. I should have given them more hugs when I could have. Thats the beauty of hindsight and distance I suppose. Combine them together and you get a doosey.

 Well I think that is enough for the night. Its getting late and we have to get up very early to go to church, so I'll be leaving you now. I am going to be updating this often. I feel it is important right now to pen out my emotions and thoughts. I feel a little better already. So I will be returing soon. Thanks for listening.