78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



walk forever, get there soon
2004-06-27   10:40 p.m.

At a wedding this weekend, a friend whom I've maintained a somewhat distant relationship with these last few years, asked me how marriage works - in a sense, I guess, asked how it feels. He seemed hesitant, he seemed reluctant to even ask, he seemed aloof; but then again, that's just his personality.

I felt it rather sweet, him asking me this question - there was honesty in his eyes; an obvious confusion. It was as if he believed marriage to be a mythical impossibility, one that he might be interested in but somehow, prophetically, better off at some distance from.

I said "Frightening. Glorious. Inconceivably surprising." Then sort of walked away. I am by no means an authority, and didn't want to be held accountable for some grand truth.

I don't know why he asked, but it's irrelevant; the thing I fixated on was his curiosity. Well perhaps not even his curiosity, especially since I've kept him at a distance for various reasons. Just that curiosity in general: marriage as comfort, joy, institution, security, legal contract, entrapment, duty...all the things it's presented to us as by the media and all that surrounds us.

Many people don't want marriage, I think, whether they realize it or not. They want challenge, and victory, but of the autonomous kind, rather than the kind of victories that are achieved with a partner. But oh, that pressure. That promise of happiness. So many people are conditioned to believe in their worthlessness, so much so that they inherently fear being alone. They think that must mean loneliness, or that they aren't capable "alone". Or, they see a distorted picture: only successful people are married. Or, just like high school, they want to fit in and be like everyone else.

When the boredom comes, years later, when we settle or realize we wonder endlessly what else was possible, we decide a quick fix-it would be to have kids. Yes surely, that will make everything better. That will bring everyone closer together, will make everyone passionately in love again, as they were those first four months of their relationship. It will make that boredom go away, right?

Not wanting to be victimized by the above, I cut loose and was confused to find that pissed people off. I did horribly selfish things like spend time alone, trying to sort out the last few years of my life. I did thoughtless things like cry every time more footage of the WTC collapsing came on TV and then write about what I was feeling. I worked on my thesis, on my MA exam, and wrote down long lists of countries and cities I wanted to visit. I made friends with the cool girl I was intimidated by but drawn to in my Psychoanalytic Literary Theory Class. I spent a lot of time having coffee with her. I stopped calling people who thought what I did in cutting loose was a "phase". I stopped calling people who didn't know how to listen. I stopped calling people who were emotional cyclones, their lives dramatic train wrecks that they wanted me to help them sort out. When I said no, I don't have time right now, they were furious and accused me of being impossibly stuck up. Then they went away, the little comments that would trail after me dying down as they found a new television show to watch. A rush of relief came. I felt free of their weight.

I started seeing someone risky, someone who wasn't that sure thing for me. Someone so handsome and confident even I was initially dubious of, but someone who thrilled me to pieces. Someone whose every move fascinated me, and someone who said the most intoxicatingly seductive things to me when no one else was looking. Someone who constantly left me asking "who does he think he is?", while simultaneously making me want to know, very badly, exactly who he was.

Then everything was "too soon". Dating again? Too soon. Seeing him a fourth time? Telling him that yes, you do love him, yes, you would go to the ends of the earth with him, letting yourself get completely swept off your feet? Too soon. Moving in? Too soon. Traveling together? Too soon. "West AFRICA? But you hardly know him!". Everything, everything, too soon. Oh, was I not respectful enough of what someone else thought was the right time? My fundamental confusion: but they're not sleeping with him, I am! How would they know?

As Charlotte Perkins Gilman once said, I cast these "noted specialists' advice to the winds." Because you see, these specialists weren't even relations, really - they were more like friends I was better off leaving far, far behind me, where they belonged in the first place. This is what my mother told me, and this was one of those pivotal moments where I realized that I had been wrong, wrong, wrong as a teenager: my mother does know exactly who I am and what is best. She does "get" me, better than some who professed to know me "better" than I know myself, as if such a thing were possible. Tsk. I felt ashamed, but ultimately grateful, to have her and my other family members' respect and support.

Bottom line is, I think, we all go through this crapola sometimes; we make decisions that others think are "bad" for us. Often, those "bad" decisions have the possibility to work out quite well, if only we're allowed to trust in and follow our instincts. We do not seem to give each other enough credit in this - why? Do we fear our friend will hurt themselves? Our brother doesn't know what's best for him? Our cousin isn't capable of making good decisions?

I went through only minor bouts of all this - I'm stubborn anyway, and it was somewhat easy to kick people out of my life who doubted me or questioned me in unacceptable, unhealthy ways. If anything, their reactions to my decisions, their criticism of my choices, made me see exactly who they were - and exactly why I could no longer be involved with them in any capacity beyond "Hello, nice weather, eh? Nice socks! Bye-bye." But what if we cannot so easily kick the bad voices out, or push them away?

Having coffee with a dear, dear friend this week, I found out that she's still excommunicated from her family for her choice in mate. I see their initial concern - I think we all did - but enough is enough. I love her so much and she needs my support, but I can not compensate for what she lacks from brother, mother, father. She's feeling so sad and lost - how must that feel? Your entire family turning their backs on you, disrespectful of your choice and trying to choose for you by force? I do not know how to help her.

I was reminded of my own frustrations and periods in my life where I felt told "what to do", unfairly judged and criticized, by the people who knew me LEAST. It was quite easy to tell them to shove off. What happens when it's the above situation, but with people who are supposed to know you best, supposed to be supportive?

I was also reminded how lucky I am to have a family full of people who've always treated me like an adult, always cared for my well being, always told me it's ok to feel and make careful decisions based on those feelings, even if the decisions have temporary messy results. I hope I can instill the same in my children.

Moment after moment of intensive bonding, talking, fighting, gazing, testing, laughing, and I found myself sitting opposite a West African bus stop with someone whom I knew well but still had the blissful opportunity to get to know. He'd said again and again, early on, "I'll marry you, I'll marry you, I'll marry you". I'd smile secretly wanting that, pretending to see it all as hypothetical. With nothing to do but talk while waiting for those African buses, with test after test of the third world kind: malaria scares, sudden blackouts, walking down dirt roads rife with possibilities of banditry or militia violence in the pitch-black, tro-tro breakdowns, with triumph after triumph of new jobs, new passport stamps, new visas, new degrees, new friends and new family members, all that was hypothetical began to come real.

So that's my story, my version of marriage and how it happens. I'm sticking to it.

His?

Because I was strange, and always curious, because I fascinated him, he said. Because I took risks, because I wasn't afraid to make a clean break from everyone and everything whom I no longer saw anything in. Because I didn't look like everyone else, and because I wasn't afraid to render him speechless. Because I really listened, was fiercely loyal and loving toward those who'd earned my respect, and wasn't afraid to do things by myself. Because I was intensely close with my siblings and my mother, because I talked about my father like he was still alive. Because I had everything all laid out for myself, then just walked away because it didn't feel right. Because I wasn't afraid to walk away from a perfectly good, well paying job to further my education. Because I wasn't afraid to go to Paraguay.

It's what we see as a future; it's that we never say "I already know all about you" to each other. It's that we know there will be years of slow knowing and understanding, and that even after 50 we'll still be a mystery to each other. It's that every day is new, surprising - sometimes in the worst ways, but often in the best ways.

It's the only explanation as to how we became husband and wife.

Well that, and the standard "we love each other very much" routine. Well isn't that obvious?

xo,