So like a total weirdo, I am currently obsessed with weddings. Partly I blame Etsy, because they sent me an email containing the single most beautiful (and custom... and afforable!) wedding dress I have ever seen. Partly I blame my recent intense unhappiness, because what is better when you are unhappy than fantasizing about a day when you won't be unhappy, when ostensibly you'll be as far from unhappy as few people ever are? Or whatever. I'm bored therefore I want to get married.
Actually, it makes perfect sense. I am not one to run off to Vegas with the first meathead who would have me, so the idea of a wedding or marriage encapsulates a lot of what I want and where I want to be. If I am getting married it'll be because one, I am in a functional and strong relationship and madly in love, and two, because financially and materially, I am at a point in my life where having a nice wedding and a marriage and being a real person are achievable, tangible realities. Does that even make sense? Like, if I can afford a wedding, if I have found someone who wants to marry me despite my readily apparent insanity, if I am secure enough in my own accomplishments and financial situation to join my life- like, mentally and economically- with another person in an equal partnership... well, that would be an awesome place to be, I think.
My friends look down on me for loving weddings and the idea of marriage. They think it is hopelessly naive and old fashioned and a real character flaw that I look forward to getting and being married. My friends are generally cynical assholes though, so who cares what they think anyway. I think it's sad to expect all marriages to end in divorce- not that I am unaware of the current state of the institution, but just because the grimness is real doesn't make it any less pitiable. I don't think I have unrealistic, Disney-fied expectations of love and marriage. I have seen what marriage looks like on a day-to-day, stressed-over-money, no-sex-having, failure-to-communicate-on-a-regular-basis-basis. Yes, I too have parents, and their marriage is dysfunctional as hell. What's funny is that apparently, miserable as they are most of the time, their marriage is the one outlasting all of their peers, so maybe it isn't as miserable as all that? Parents, who knows man.
Marriage seems like a great adventure to me. Like, there's this person, and he thinks you are so great that he wants to be a part of the day to day shenanigans of your life, and for a long time. And you are partners, and you're there for each other, and even when it's a slog, it's still kind of fun because this person is your best friend and you get to see him and talk to him every day. And you can grow together and change together, and see the world together, and what's so terrible about that? About having someone to depend on, someone who cares about how you feel and wants you to be happy and you want him to be happy? Ok so getting a little cornball there, but at the same time it's all true. And I am totally in the Laura Kipnis school of thought that says marriage and love should not be work, that these beautiful and transcendent connections we forge with other people should not be hijacked by the lingo of the industrial revolution. It should be play, not that I don't imagine it's at time challenging and painful play.
I would like to believe that love can last a lifetime. I don't see why not. I am going to love my sisters for the rest of my life. Even when I hate them I love them, I don't have a choice. They are as much a part of me as my lungs, or my spleen, and only in part because we share blood. Marce and I share no blood, but she is my sister as much as the other two. Because we grew up together, and we are growing up together, and even when I thought we had gone our separate ways, the ties weren't quite severed all the way and today I doubt they ever will be. Sure it sounds kinda like a curse, this incurable love. And maybe that's what it is, and that's how it should be. I am cursed to love them and so I do and will. Why can't the same kind of thinking apply to romantic love? I will love you, husband, for ever, because I do and I must and I have no choice. Two people with their eyes wide open, knowing the perils of it all and still choosing to live their lives together and try against all odds to be happy- that is damned romantic.
I mean, to an extent anyway. If you think about it too hard you start to realize that marriage is like children in that any idiot can have one, and many idiots often do. On somewhat of a sidenote, a friend of a friend of mine recently got married and stuck her pictures all over facebook, and you gotta realize too that really ugly people get married all the time. Which sounds shallow and horrible, but goddamn man. You shouldn't wear blue eyeshadow up to your eyebrows just in general, but especially not on your wedding day. And it's like, why bother making the effort to look nice if any ugly old schlub out there can get married and you can't? Or just haven't, I guess. Not that I want to right now necessarily. It's just that seeing so many people I know- people my same age and all- get engaged and get married, it always throws me.
Hmm. So what was the point again? Oh yes. I am bored with my stupid life, can't wait to fix it, and I love that dress. Also, I think it's funny that Chris talks about us getting married even though we've been together for all of ten minutes. Knowing that he also planned to marry a certain ex of his, whom I know from close experience to be insane and also ugly, I can't take him seriously, as much fun as it is to talk hypotheticals. And, I wouldn't marry him anyway because there's no point in marrying a lawyer; they never have time for you anyway.
