05.04.11 - 5:42 p.m.

I am so tired of planning the wedding. I am so tired of thinking about bands and contracts and which song is going to play at which time and who still needs their little girl's dress and why this vendor hasn't called me back and on and on and on and on.

Of course, being the woman and thus being FLOORED with enthusiasm over getting married, it's all on me. Dan says "I can help once school is over," but we all know that's too late. And p.s., I'm teaching 5 classes too, dick. This whole thing is sort of a farce--they are right when they say that marriage doesn't change anything. The same irritations are at play, only now the stakes are higher.

Now, in reality I am happy to be getting married (I think) but I am weary of negotiating so many things at once. Dan's had all the FUN of marriage (gifts, crazy bachelor weekend) and I am the one with the endless To-Do list while he complains if I am not available to him at all times. I feel like I have been in a total cloud lately. The only conversations I have really had with anyone besides Dan have been about the wedding. I would LOVE to go somewhere for the weekend. I am going home, but it is to try on the dress, to practice my hairstyle, to have a wedding shower. I feel sort of like, "Dang, son, I am doing all of this crap and you don't even recognize it--in fact, you totally clam up when I even mention it."

And for myself, I am such an ASSHOLE these days. I totally bite everyone's head off. This poor kid comes in and wants to use the computer lab to print out some paper and I just wont let him because FUCK i could use some quiet time. Just some time alone without anyone looking at me or asking me questions or demanding answers.

I am unbelievably fortunate to be loved by Dan and friends and family but sometimes I feel like a real victim. There is a big part of me that wants to be alone, but it's hard to be alone.

Sometimes I think--if I won the lottery and was financially viable on my own terms, I would totally blow this whole gig off, but it's hard to live a life of solitude these days--who pays for it? I am sure that things are just fine and will be just fine its just that all of a sudden I am 31 and options aren't open to me in the same way. I've met the man that I am going to marry--what happens after that?

You have children, you start an exercise routine, you join a church, you buy clothes, you buy dog food, you start a savings account for your kid. And then you die. Of course, of course, of course just wonderful things happen between here and there, but they are wonderful things that I am not entirely prepared to accept. I still feel unrealized and I wonder if you can ever realize yourself when you are with someone else.

Rainer Maria Rilke writes:
The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Where each partner appoints the other to be the keeper of his solitude...but that still a marvelous living side-by-side can grow for them.

I like this concept--it feels freeing somehow. I've never really been the type to desire a full self demolition in order to "become one". "Becoming one" in and of itself seems like sort of a terrible concept.

I feel like a ballet dancer in those spins they do--they can only manage them because they pick a focus to set on in the milisecond they have between rotations. I'm slowed down, but every now and then I come around to the spot of my focus and I feel vacant. I don't feel full of giddy pleasure--I feel void. Like imagining an ordinary Wednesday in the future. What do I even have anymore? When I look back on these pages I do see excitement, anxiety, intrigue, depression--things now have evened out but deepened too. I have less bad days and I have less good days; I have less feeling--I am an operator, a director and only here and there do I feel as an actor.

Maybe post marriage I will concentrate, again, on becoming. It was really hard for me before because I was so busy trying to pay my rent, and falling in and out of love, and taking the bus and drinking too much, and walking home at dangerous hours in compromising positions. I guess I was a kind of city girl.

Now I drive to and from work with my fiancee in a responsible car. I live in a different, much smaller city--I think some people would say I've kind of "made it." Mom told me that my cousin had asked what I did with Dan that made him propose to me and then mom asked the same thing, sorta--"Yeah, how DID you land Dan?" I don't feel that phenomenal--he had his hand out for help too and we touched each other. I tagged him and we're spending our lives side by side. Big deal. People really overestimate marriage, although my friend pierre writes, "Man by nature needs to reproduce with as many different women as possible. Physical attractions wears off. It's a biological phenomenon. For every supermodel out there, there is a guy who is tired of fucking her. Butterflies is not what marriage is about, I don't think."

So I am not signing my soul away--I am getting married--living my life. I just ask for the control of self to move in the right direction. I am, also, so freaking tired. I feel so ill at ease. I feel overly sensitive--i want to get stoned immediately just to stop feeling so much. I want people to stop looking at me. I want to be alone or something. Not alone; I want a different life for a few days. I want people around me, but I want myself to be different. This I can work on, I think.

�

previous - next