i have a total crush on you.

happy tuesday everyone!
i hope you're ready for some fabulous jams.

today's tunes are sort of an extension of last week's tunes.
i had soo much stuff to do last week and i didn't have much time to think too creatively about the music.
i knew i wanted to share the playlist of songs that garrett gave to me in his desperate attempts to tell me he was in love with me. because come on. that's cute.
but i also wanted to share other songs that i've found over time that have made me feel very much in love.
for a long time i just had them in a playlist just so i could have them organized.
but now they're just the songs that make me feel very happy to be married and to be in love.


because here's the story.
i was in love before garrett.
honest.
it was different. it was harder. but it was love.
i don't deny that.
and when love ends, it's not always mutual.
in this case it definitely was not.
my heart was not just broken. it was shattered. destroyed, really.
i'll spare you the gruesome details of full force depression and just say this:
i was broken.
not just my heart.
every part of me was broken.
i didn't know how to think.
i didn't know how to act.
i couldn't remember anything except the pain i felt.
(sidenote: this isn't just melodramatic musings. this is the culmination of a really rough break up and a pretty severe case of depression that had not been treated or addressed yet. you see, i have a bleeding disorder, too. and this break up would have been like getting a huge cut before i found out i had the bleeding disorder. it was bad to begin with. but it was made worse by the unaddressed issues that were already present. make sense? i hope so.)
i wasn't in control of my life anymore.
i was numb to everything else in my life.
i knew i had family and friends that loved me but i couldn't feel it.
i cried a lot.
i hurt a lot.
(and yes, i have a playlist (that might trump all other playlists i've made) that fully depicts everything i felt at that time. )
(i just put a parenthetic comment within a parenthetic comment. that makes me awesome. or weird.)
years have passed, and i still don't know how to express everything completely.
the pain itself is gone, but on occasion, if i'm talking about it or listening to a certain song, i still cry.
not for the same reasons.
but because it's hard for me to think back to that time.
it's hard for me to remember just how much i was hurting.
it's hard to remember how capable i am of feeling that kind of pain.


anyways. i'm getting off track here.
the point is this: i was in love. i got hurt. i lost hope. i gave up.
i was certain that my one chance at happiness had just been ripped from me.
i was positive that i would never feel that way about someone ever again.
and i truly believed i would never stop hurting.
and for a while, that was all true.
months and months passed and it didn't go away.
i prayed and begged and tried so hard to do everything i could to move on.
but i remained glued, fixed in the same place complete with all the original hurt.
just as i would take a step to get better something would happen and i would take two steps back.
it was horrible.
and i was so frustrated. because i didn't want to be doing it anymore. i didn't want to cry. i didn't want to hurt. i didn't want to be stuck. but i was.


until one night in early september.
i was laying in the middle of my bedroom.
i was frustrated and angry and exhausted and sick of crying.
and then it happened.
i don't know how to explain it.
it was just gone.
everything was just lifted.
it was like i could take a real breath after 11 months of strained gasps.
i don't know how to explain it, but it was over.
like a storm had just passed.
there was still stuff to deal with, but the storm was over.


a month and a half later, garrett returned from his LDS mission in Perth, Australia.
when i saw him for the first time in two years i knew my life was going to change.
and that night as i sat across from him on his parent's couch i told him i loved him.
and in my mind, i flashed back to the past 11 months.
i flashed back to how much i feared i would be alone for the rest of my life.
and i felt so happy for the first time in so long. it was hard to believe that that was my new reality.
i wasn't just happy again.
i wasn't just in love again.
it was so much better than before.
because this time it was right.

so this playlist isn't your normal "love songs" sort of playlist.
(but we could definitely do that for a future tune in tuesday)
they're the songs that make me happy to know that i'm in love.
they're the songs that make me happy to know that i'm capable of loving and feeling love.
they're the songs that make me grateful to be with garrett.
they're the songs that make me feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have a husband that loves me despite everything i've done/do.


this is a playlist that's all about us.
all my bumps and wounds and faults and sad times included.
because that's what makes us us.
k+g
and it's actually a pretty fun playlist.


and of course it's all cheesy. that's love, right? cheesy and fun.
but i think you might like it, too. so listen and feel the love. and the cheese.



love,
kate.


lyrics:  we should make a formal agreement to only kiss each other.