welcome to a new decade! hoorah! huzzah! or however you say it in your own language. we rang in the new year over lofty poetry and bubbly drinks, though i ended up reading miss nelson is missing instead. to lighten up the mood, you know. but then when i went home, an inescapable dread seemed to follow me. i tried to place my finger on the uneasiness in my heart, but i had a hard time naming it. 2011 marks a monumental year for me. it's the year i get married. two become one. before it had been this far off notion, and now it seems to hit my brain with an unsettling thud.
it's hard to express this when everyone prances around you and says, "you're going to be a beautiful winter bride!" it's not so much the ceremony that scares me, or even the marriage part. it's just the idea of one era ending to make way for another.
it was like a sigh of relief when i met with another bride-to-be over fish tacos last summer. she told me that she was thrilled to get married, but that the reality of never having female roommates to faff around with again made her incredibly sad. she talked about mourning her singleness before moving on to embrace doubleness. and this made complete sense to me.
so, it's not marrying R which scares me. we relish any moments we can play "house" together and often comment that we can't wait to start our new lives together, but it's the embracing of marriage which scares me. like any lover, Marriage comes with a lot of baggage, too. if it were called "bamble bambu," i'd be fine with it, i think.
when i think of marriage, i think of 1950s movies with perfect wives, and hard-working husbands who wear hats. i think of giving up what you want in order to be dutiful and submissive. i think of holding up a construct which is both revered by society and incredibly fragile. i think, 'what if it breaks?' i can already hear the waves of "oh no! it's nothing like that!" friends have even told me that i'll really enjoy being married...and i think that i will. but right now feels like a process.
you know how people near death talk about that tunnel of white light they walk through to get to the other side? i feel like it's one of those moments. the moment of passing from singlehood to doublehood. it's just that i like to smell the roses along the way, and this is me thinking it all through before i miss the moment.
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i have been observing married people a lot lately like a sort of specimen study. i watch what they do. what they say. how they act. i observe and make inferences about what their lives are like. i'm always in awe of how sure they all seem. i know it's probably just an external thing, but i find it daring that they can say, "we're moving to africa," and it becomes true. it's like the silly things you used to say to one another when you were dating all of a sudden can become more serious when you are married.
again, i'm sure this is just me having a false perception of married life, but this is the one thing that scares me. getting married seems so...adult. and i seem so...unadult. you go to grad school to become a professional, but all you have to do is love someone to get married. where is the instruction manual so i can get it right?
i expect that i'll break all my false perceptions of marriage once we get married, but as the big day draws ever nearer, i will take a pause from ordering printed napkins and champagne glasses to consider the truly momentous change that is coming. even though it is mundane to the caterpillar that he must weave his cocoon to become a butterfly, pausing to behold the truly awesome change will never be less than spectacular.
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