it has happened. it's truly actually happened. i swore an oath late last august when within a week i first called off my marriage, then my mother called and said she wasn't coming so i un-called off my marriage, and then–my best friend got her tickets to come to the wedding, and after that i was DEFINITELY getting married.

and now *i have tickets to scotland* and i will be there for my best friend's wedding and it is scaring me beyond words, i am agoraphobic, i have never flown transcontinental before, i despise children and she has one that's nearly four and will be 8 1/2 months pregnant, and I AM GOING TO SCOTLAND.

mind that this is not a pleasure trip, i only get a few days there…my mind would break if it were longer. but isn't it handy that for the last two months my prescriber forgot and accidentally prescribed me equal amounts of valium as well as my normal daily klonopin? and isn't it handy that i never take all of what i'm given, i am very thrifty, in fact, and so now even if he won't send me an emergency prescription i think i might survive?

(a famous neurologist that my mother, an R.N., went to see spoke publically and said that the problem with benzodiazepines is that the people who REALLY need them *are not addicted* to them. it's the majority who become addicted…and those people didn't have the neurochemistry to really NEED them at all. they needed help, certainly, but not xanax, not valium or klonopin. and interestingly, while my panic attacks can and have put me into grand mal seizures, i have had addictions (to other things, such as alcohol, never pills); but i never take my benzos unless i am feeling strongly anxious–say, one every few days…my prescription is for two a day.)

so…i'm going to the armpit of scotland. the local tourist attraction, and the one i insist on seeing is the blackberry twig (it can't be called a bush or even a true bramble) that all the drunks of airdrie piss upon on their way home after the pubs close. but! i will be there for my best friend's wedding! and i am going to fly, all by myself, for hours and hours and hours, and they will probably have to decant me from the airplane when i finally reach edinburgh, but i will have gotten on and fought my terror the whole way to amsterdam, found my way through a scary foreign airport, out through another one, and just…wow. two years ago, one, this would not be possible for me at all. i'll probably down half the valium i have saved before i get home a few days later…but i'm GOING TO MOTHERFUCKING SCOTLAND.

…and next year, i'm going to *iceland*.