Another day, another bagel.
Fish fish fish.
I wrote this post last night, after watching 27 Dresses (yeah, I have a weakness for stupid romcoms, despite how much gender and race fail they tend to have).
Nine years ago, when I was 15, my parents split up.
What followed was an ordeal. Divorce is almost never a fun or happy affair, but some are worse than others, and my parents’ was pretty bad, as they go. I remember that time as being the first time I’d ever seen my father cry. I spent several months watching my mother try to hold it together while she felt like she was being torn apart. It remains one of the worst times of my life so far, even including The Year of Bed Bugs.
I don’t think I’m alone among children of divorce in having a deep mistrust of the institution of marriage. When you witness two people being torn apart, especially considering how difficult it is legally, it makes you leery of entering into that kind of institution yourself. Several years ago I wrote an essay on my private journal about how marriage, as an institution, either needed to be abolished entirely or revolutionized by making it available to everyone (i.e. gay marriage is awesome and if you don’t think so why the hell are you reading this blog). I still believe that, for the most part. Part of me also believes that I will never get married. But as the years go by, I feel less and less sure of myself on that subject.
Not to say there’s anyone in my life right now (there isn’t, and I’m just fine with that), but ever since my parents got divorced, I have been swearing up and down that marriage isn’t for me. A civil union, perhaps. Some kind of business partnership, maybe. But marriage? Isn’t it a better test of love if two people can stay together for twenty or thirty years without something making it difficult for them to part ways? That was what I always told myself. And I do still believe that. But part of me wonders how much of my belief was founded in my certainty that no one would ever want to marry me anyway. I spent a good long bit of my life firm in the belief that I was ugly, that no one would ever want me, and it wasn’t even worth trying. Now I wonder how much of my general belief about my future came from a combination of that and the backlash from my parents’ divorce.
Especially now, seeing things like the Museum of Fat Love, reading the blogs of fat activists who are happily married and talk about their marriages fairly regularly, it challenges my previous notions of how my future might look.
I’m still generally leery of the institution of marriage. The truth is, I don’t really like a good bit of my family. I don’t really want them to be there if I am getting married. Plus, really, I don’t see the point on spending $5,000 on a wedding dress I will wear once (firmly ensconced in the childfree by choice camp over here, so I won’t have anyone to pass it down to) and then put in storage, even if it’s specially made for me by magical pixies. Not to mention all the other ridiculously overpriced things people expect. No, thank you.
I’ve told several of my friends this, but I already have a plan if I do ever meet someone I want to marry (and anyone I’d want to marry would respect my views enough to agree, with perhaps a few small alterations). I am going to book a flight to the Bahamas for myself, my significant other, my mother and my best friend (and perhaps one or two of their family members, if they feel the need to have them along, but no more than that). We will have a very brief ceremony on the beach, perhaps fifteen minutes, and then we will all go and have an amazing dinner and get somewhat drunk (if we so choose). The next morning my significant other and I will take a ferry to another island, perhaps a small one rented for the week just for us, or whatever (depends on finances at the time). Our two (or four) guests will stay at the resort and do whatever the hell they want in their own rooms for the next few days, and we will have our honeymoon privately on our island. Then, a few months after we’ve gotten back to the US, we’ll throw a party and invite anyone we feel like, and say “sure you can bring presents if you want, but don’t feel pressured” and have a nice old (cheap) time. And we’ll pay for everything ourselves, I forgot to mention that bit. Airfare and hotel stay for our family members as well as ourselves, and everything for the party (it’ll probably be catered by my friend Eva, at our house or a friend’s house).
I don’t really like tradition that much, personally. I like being different. And I’m a fan of not paying out the nose for one day in my entire life. I’ll also probably have been living with this person for several years prior to the actual formal ceremony (I firmly believe in living with someone full time before marrying them, as well has knowing them for at least five or six years prior to engagement), which is why we’d pay for it ourselves. I mean, really? Why the hell would you make someone else pay for a ceremony that basically marks the fact that you’re embarking upon your life together? I can’t think of anything less empowering than someone else ponying up the dough for that. I want to earn my own wedding, damn it.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with other people having traditional weddings. They’re properly lovely and fun and all that, really. But I can’t see myself doing that. They just hit me in all the wrong ways. I don’t want to start off what may possibly (hopefully) be a lifelong commitment that way. And I have a realistic view of the chances of any such commitment. One of the things that my mother said to me a while ago, back when the divorce was still a fresh wound for us both and I was angrily proclaiming my hatred for marriage, seems especially pertinent to me now. “You can’t go into any relationship expecting it to end. But you have to realize that someday it probably will.” Yeah, for a certain percentage of people, that end may be when they’re both old and wrinkled and one of them dies in their sleep. But for the majority of us, lifelong commitments aren’t a realistic expectation anymore, especially since people keep seeming to rush into marriage when they’ve known each other for so little time (a year, or two, at most). We hope that we’ll be together forever. But expecting it with certainty is really naive. On the other hand, you can’t live each day dreading that it will be the day you call it quits with them. So you have to find the balance.
I don’t know, really. Perhaps in five years, I’ll have changed my mind about this. But somehow, I don’t think so. It’s been nine years since my parents divorced, and I still haven’t gotten over my mistrust of the institution, so I’m not gonna hold my breath.
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