I am supposed to go to a wedding on Saturday. I feel I'll disappoint my friend if I don't go because so many of us from work haven't been able to participate in her bridal festivities. It would depress anyone that your co-workers/friends, whom you see almost every day, thinks nothing of your biggest day.
My problem is that I don't feel very loving. I don't feel well enough to be surrounded by a couple hundred strangers celebrating marital love, a gift I will never know. I feel like crap, to say the least, because my own heart is crushed and broken and lost. And I'm suppose to put on a happy face and be congratulatory.
Disgusting thing is that I will do it. I will go. I will be happy for her...and I am...but I will be crying so hard. I will feel depressed like most single people do at these events. I will be there for her and her groom. I will be torn inside with envy and sadness because I want it too.
How can people not want that bliss? That joy of finding their life partner? The fulfillment of a quest to find the one person who will be your best friend, your sexual mate, your partner? The person who knows your worst traits and loves you entirely because of them. Who knows the darkness of the soul only makes the light so much brighter. That you are far more beautiful because you're not perfect.
So many people go into marriage thinking it's the wedding or the Cinderella ending that they forget about the shit that it takes to make a relationship work. People forget that Cinderella had a lot of crap in her life way before the storybook ending. She lost both parents. She was abused and neglected. She tolerated cruelties and losses beyond comprehension. Then she fell in love with her soul mate. She took a chance and went against the norm. She disobeyed her oppressors and her learned instincts to not wish and hope and want more. She followed her true self and allowed herself to experience love. It was dangerous. It was secret. It was scary. And she had to run away just a bit to keep herself safe. BUT, she hadn't given up. She still knew there was more to it between the prince and herself; and before her reunion with her prince, she was locked away and nearly lost him...all the before stuff was glossed over and forgotten because we know she lives happily ever after.
Now, we know how I feel about women waiting to be rescued by men. I'm not against people rescuing each other. I don't us, women to think we can't rescue right back. But looking at this story in this different light, we see that Cinderella is one messed-up gal. All of those girls were in the fairytales. So what becomes of them all when they find their Prince Charmings? Does the previous hell get forgotten? Do they suddenly become right as rain? Do they never suffer emotionally again?
Or does Cinderella and her man fight? Does he wonder why she's crying all the time? Does he have a fucked up sense of the world too that she can't seem to get through? Do they fall bleary eyed in love with one another to find out there's a lot of hard work to make their relationship last and they just can't stand the possibility of a little extra effort? Are the obstacles too much to overcome that they give up and the prince gets himself a concubine to satisfy his lusts and soothe his broken heart? Because he never stops loving Cinderella. He just doesn't know how to get through to her. Or did he never love her but she showed him the possibiity of love again? And Cinderella? Does she become bitter and more withdrawn and thinks, "What the fuck?! Does everyone have to be this way with me? Loving me and leaving me? What the hell am I doing wrong? All I wanted to do was love someone?! I thought the bond was strong enough?"
Perhaps I have some misconceptions about relationships and love. Mainly they are warped that the people involved will get hurt, but I try to give them a chance. I don't go blindly into them thinking all will be solved. I don't go stupidly into them thinking there are pedestals and shit. People are fucked in the head. We have baggage. I just thought you never gave up on a person because of all that rot. I thought relationships were about it being tough and painful and scary as well as beautiful and magnificent. I thought you got the ugly with the majestic; but loving and respecting someone meant accepting ALL of it, rolling up your fucking shirt sleeves, and getting messy. I never imagined there would be NO problems. I just assumed love meant working through them together.
Guess I'm wrong.
It took over thirty years to be who I am. I didn't learn the bad habits of approaching life overnight. I didn't adopt them because I wanted to be some rebel without a cause. I'm Naomi because my life has been fucked up. I'm fucked up. It's going to take more than a day or six months to adopt newer approaches to life. It's going to take someone not afraid of detoxing and purging the old ways with me...that's what I had hoped and thought would happen.
Again, I guess I'm wrong.
I hate the bullshit that some people aren't meant for relationships. Why is that so? It only justifies that I'm crap. It only supports my belief that if ANYONE in this world doesn't deserve love and a relationship, then I'm that person. If I can't accept you for all of who you are, then who the hell is going to want me?! If people are afraid of the pain of a relationship, then why get involved? Why commit yourself to another person?
When my parents divorced, my father was devastated. They were married eighteen years when the decree was finalized. It took my father nine years or so before he decided to marry again. I won't go into what my feelings were about it all because it's a difficult tale to tell. Soon after the wedding, my father got ill. He and his wife were married for only a few years before he was diagnosed with Parkinson's. And his wife walked out and into her own apartment because my father became too much for her.
I know this situation was difficult, but it's not like the woman had it hard anyways. At one point, before my father got ill, she had two jobs and was going to school. She was almost never home. Then when pop got sick, she was still going to school during the day and working at night. Again, almost never home. My sister did so much for my dad. My brother moved back to Tennessee to help care for him. My dad got sicker and sicker; and finally, one day his wife decided it was too much. She said she couldn't stand it that my father never wanted to do anything. My brother helped her move out. She visited my dad a couple days a week. She had been visiting him for a couple of consecutive days when he had died.
I get angry at that. She married him. Shouldn't she have known what could be involved when you commit yourself to a person? My father was already an older, sick man before this illness. He had survived a brain aneurysism and alcoholism before his remarriage. It's not like she was unaware. EVEN SO...had he been a healthy man in his thirties, you never know what's going to happen. He could have had a car accident and been paralyzed from the neck down. Does it matter?
Marriage is no heaven free of bad days. But to endure it all because you respect and love someone else....that's all I'm asking. I was going to say it takes courage, but sometimes that's lacking, at least at the start. You can be frightened and disbelieve almost everything; but to put weight in a relationship it involves perserverance and compassion and some toughness.
Maybe that's lacking in me. Maybe in you.
I don't know. So many reasons relationships end but I hope they don't because of lack of trying especially when everything else involved seems to be right.
I hope the best for my friend and her groom. I will keep all doubt to myself about relationships. All bitterness under control. All pain and sadness will be repressed.
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