Wedding Blog

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

I’d been helping my parents out for 3 1/2 years when I first met Mr. Bee. It was one of the most stressful and depressed times of my life. My parents own a couple of private postsecondary schools, and I had been running one of them. But after September 11th, all their schools were in crisis. Public programs our vocational school relied on were heavily cut because of the war; the rest of their schools had to go through a grueling renewal process. I oversaw every application, every contract, every site visit, everything for 4 schools during that time. It would be one thing if I were doing this for myself. Because I was doing it for my family, I took so much personal responsibility - I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. Failure was not an option.

One day I just broke down and cried in front of my dad. I couldn’t take it anymore. My family felt immensely grateful for everything I’d done, but I was involved with everything from legal maintenance to finances to administration to day-to-day operations. They relied on me so much, there was never a good time for me to leave. I’d sacrificed a lot to help my family and I’d do it again in a heartbeat, but it was time for me to be a little selfish and think of my own happiness. I felt so guilty wanting to leave but if I stayed, I would have died. I told them I’d oversee a summer program that was coming up, and then I wanted to move to New York. My family agreed.

The summer program ended and on August 22, 2004 (about 10 months after I first met Mr. Bee), I moved to New York. I’ve suffered from anxiety and depression for most of my life, and this was honestly the first time I’d been happy in a decade. I don’t believe that you can find happiness through another person - you first have to be happy with yourself. And I was happy.

Mr. Bee and I always say that if it weren’t for September 11th, we never would have met because I never would have blogged about our school problems (which were a direct result of 9/11), and he never would have contacted me. Ironically we live right by the former World Trade Center site and pass by it on our way to the subway every single day.