My First Chiverish Without Him.

So, this sucks. Again.

This weekend is the annual Chive on Chicago "Kiss Me I'm Chiverish" meetup in Rosemont. This is a HUGE, HUGE Chive meetup where Chivers from ALL OVER THE COUNTRY (literally--Seattle, Alabama, New York, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and pretty much the entire midwest) come to Chicago to party and raise money for charity. Most of them plan it as a long weekend. There were a ton of people getting in to town tonight, and a lot of them went sightseeing or out to dinner at Kuma's Corner. They'll do some more sightseeing or other activities tomorrow, and then there are a couple "pre-party" welcome-party type things going on at night. Saturday people will be doing any number of things--brunches, lunches, there's a Brookfield Zoo trip, some people are going into the city, some people will be hanging out at the hotel, some people will be wandering around Rosemont, whatever. Then everyone goes back to their rooms, gets all ready and dolled up, and doors open to the venue (Joe's Live) at 6:30 pm. Then--it's party time! We all hang out, see friends we don't get to see very often, drink, dance, there's a silent auction, DJ, basically just a good old time with a shit-ton of awesome people.

The morning after has always been the Polar Plunge at North Avenue Beach for Special Olympics Chicago. In years past, I always said "HELL NO!!" But for some reason, this year, I gave in to Jeremy's demands. Yes, I will be plunging. So a bunch of us crazy, out-of-our-mind, hungover Chivers will be heading to Lake Michigan Sunday morning to continue our good deeds and plunge for charity. After we return to Rosemont, we will have brunch/lunch, and then most of us will head home or on our ways.

It's always a great, fun-filled weekend. I'm very much looking forward to seeing a lot of amazing friends I've made through this group over the years. This will be my fourth Chiverish!

But...my first one without David.

Yup. Womp womp. I had to come in and get all Debbie Downer about it. I mean....it's March already. I honestly thought this all would be over and he would be home by now. It kind of breaks my heart that he can't be here for this.

I tossed around the idea of not going for quite awhile. I honestly don't know how I'm going to handle being there without him. But, I have to go. These are my friends. And my life has been "on hold" enough as it is lately. I can't forego every fun time just because he can't be here to share it with me. But at the same time, I feel guilty that I'm out here, with my freedom, having fun, and he's still stuck in that shithole of a place for going on seven months now. I feel like if he's miserable, I should share in that burden. It sucks.

I just really hope this shit is all over soon. I don't know how much more of this I can go through!! CXSE is coming up in just a couple short months. If we don't make it to that, I have no idea WHAT I'll do. :-(