A lot of teenage girls think about marriage. At 16, I thought about my wedding day sometimes, too.
The wedding day on my mind was not focused on the type of flowers I held, nor did it involve a certain precious metal wedding band. I never calculated how much the bill would be for the food I wanted my guests to be served, and I didn't bookmark potential bride shoes if I came across them while shopping online. For a long, long time, I swore I'd never have children.
When I was 16, I thought about my wedding day more with curiosity than attention to detail. I saw myself on a beach with the love of my life, wearing whatever white casual getup I ran into on the way there, probably barefoot and surrounded by a very small group of people I probably hadn't met yet. I tried to imagine the thoughts going through my head, and what circumstances I'd have to live through in order to think those things; what I'd have to live through to get to that moment of clarity, the moment I decided, for sure, who I wanted to be with for the rest of my life.
I'd hear my friends talk about who they wanted to marry, what kind of ornate dress they would wear, what kind of house they'd want to live in...how many kids they'd have. And then I'd wonder if, perhaps, I might be over-thinking things; maybe they were right to not take such a fun day so seriously. It's not supposed to be mentally heavy -- it's supposed to be a celebration of the rest of your life. Your life, with this person. The person you chose to build a life with. The one you chose. For the rest. Of. Your. Life.
Though I tried, I never got past that part of it. That part felt so serious to me, and I was never able to trivialize it even for the sake of social acceptance, which I wanted very badly then.
Many of those girls got married soon after high school, playing out their fantasies the moment they snagged a provider. I watched the divorces pile up quietly on Facebook as I hedged my way through college -- for awhile there, someone's last name would change every other day or so. A few made a show of it, posting their iPhone photos of their settlement papers, declaring what crappy bar they could be found at that night. Most just receded into the background, unwilling to eat their pride publicly. Some of them made it, but some of those are too insecure to end it.
I'm sitting here years after their first failed marriages, willing to gloat about what I did right. I didn't want marriage; I wanted to be ready for marriage. I didn't want kids; I wanted someone incredible enough to make me want more of him. I didn't want a husband that fit my parents' idea of one; I wanted a husband who would make them revise their idea. I'm sitting here at 27 years old, thinking about how I wanted those things at 16, and how very, very strange it is that I knew him then.
But how strange is it, really? That I watched him turn into the only man who could ever get an effortless "yes" out of me? That I dreamed up my idealistic notions of marriage while I accidentally fell in love with my future husband over a decade ago? Did he simply get in the way of my pencil as I drafted my masterpiece -- is it permanently incomplete without him?
Is this no more strange than anyone else's love story?
From one end, and from my glassy teenage eyes, I see it as the most complicated and surreal thing that's ever happened to anybody; it's the story that literally defined me; the thing that no one thought would ever, ever work itself out, but somehow, it has.
But from the other end, it's so absurdly simple. It's something that has happened to many people over the course of human history, when a person walks in front of another's pencil at precisely the moment when the lead turns to ink. Maybe it doesn't happen so often in these modern times -- we have so many college years to consider and reconsider where the ink settles -- but it happens. And all those years I've had to think about erasing him -- shit, all the times I've tried to -- another couple might have been enduring the ups and downs and compromises of young marriage. Yet I can't think of those years happening any other way.
Married family members often throw out unsolicited marriage survival tips and bits of wisdom -- people 20 to 30 years my senior -- but I don't understand how or why I've already learned these things, and I have no idea how to politely reply. It's hard as hell to learn how to fully love someone else, and most of their advice concerns that hard-earned skill, meaning they didn't know how to do it when they got married.
Strange, rare, special or not, I'm getting married because I figured out how to love someone completely -- not the other way around. I'm extremely proud of that, because I've never entertained it any other way. The poor handsome sap who walked in front of my pencil 12 years ago proposed to me the other night, and I laughed because...a question? Could something so complicated boil down to such a simple request? (Apparently, it can.) And under that, a question implies that I had a choice in the matter, which I can't remember ever having.
Apparently, I did have a choice. I just made it a long time ago.
The wedding day on my mind was not focused on the type of flowers I held, nor did it involve a certain precious metal wedding band. I never calculated how much the bill would be for the food I wanted my guests to be served, and I didn't bookmark potential bride shoes if I came across them while shopping online. For a long, long time, I swore I'd never have children.
When I was 16, I thought about my wedding day more with curiosity than attention to detail. I saw myself on a beach with the love of my life, wearing whatever white casual getup I ran into on the way there, probably barefoot and surrounded by a very small group of people I probably hadn't met yet. I tried to imagine the thoughts going through my head, and what circumstances I'd have to live through in order to think those things; what I'd have to live through to get to that moment of clarity, the moment I decided, for sure, who I wanted to be with for the rest of my life.
I'd hear my friends talk about who they wanted to marry, what kind of ornate dress they would wear, what kind of house they'd want to live in...how many kids they'd have. And then I'd wonder if, perhaps, I might be over-thinking things; maybe they were right to not take such a fun day so seriously. It's not supposed to be mentally heavy -- it's supposed to be a celebration of the rest of your life. Your life, with this person. The person you chose to build a life with. The one you chose. For the rest. Of. Your. Life.
Though I tried, I never got past that part of it. That part felt so serious to me, and I was never able to trivialize it even for the sake of social acceptance, which I wanted very badly then.
Many of those girls got married soon after high school, playing out their fantasies the moment they snagged a provider. I watched the divorces pile up quietly on Facebook as I hedged my way through college -- for awhile there, someone's last name would change every other day or so. A few made a show of it, posting their iPhone photos of their settlement papers, declaring what crappy bar they could be found at that night. Most just receded into the background, unwilling to eat their pride publicly. Some of them made it, but some of those are too insecure to end it.
I'm sitting here years after their first failed marriages, willing to gloat about what I did right. I didn't want marriage; I wanted to be ready for marriage. I didn't want kids; I wanted someone incredible enough to make me want more of him. I didn't want a husband that fit my parents' idea of one; I wanted a husband who would make them revise their idea. I'm sitting here at 27 years old, thinking about how I wanted those things at 16, and how very, very strange it is that I knew him then.
But how strange is it, really? That I watched him turn into the only man who could ever get an effortless "yes" out of me? That I dreamed up my idealistic notions of marriage while I accidentally fell in love with my future husband over a decade ago? Did he simply get in the way of my pencil as I drafted my masterpiece -- is it permanently incomplete without him?
Is this no more strange than anyone else's love story?
From one end, and from my glassy teenage eyes, I see it as the most complicated and surreal thing that's ever happened to anybody; it's the story that literally defined me; the thing that no one thought would ever, ever work itself out, but somehow, it has.
But from the other end, it's so absurdly simple. It's something that has happened to many people over the course of human history, when a person walks in front of another's pencil at precisely the moment when the lead turns to ink. Maybe it doesn't happen so often in these modern times -- we have so many college years to consider and reconsider where the ink settles -- but it happens. And all those years I've had to think about erasing him -- shit, all the times I've tried to -- another couple might have been enduring the ups and downs and compromises of young marriage. Yet I can't think of those years happening any other way.
Married family members often throw out unsolicited marriage survival tips and bits of wisdom -- people 20 to 30 years my senior -- but I don't understand how or why I've already learned these things, and I have no idea how to politely reply. It's hard as hell to learn how to fully love someone else, and most of their advice concerns that hard-earned skill, meaning they didn't know how to do it when they got married.
Strange, rare, special or not, I'm getting married because I figured out how to love someone completely -- not the other way around. I'm extremely proud of that, because I've never entertained it any other way. The poor handsome sap who walked in front of my pencil 12 years ago proposed to me the other night, and I laughed because...a question? Could something so complicated boil down to such a simple request? (Apparently, it can.) And under that, a question implies that I had a choice in the matter, which I can't remember ever having.
Apparently, I did have a choice. I just made it a long time ago.
I knew it. Congratulations.
ReplyDelete