I am petrified to get married.
I am petrified to be alone.
I am slowly plodding through "She's Come Undone" (and I am almost through it! Hey, it is a long-ass book!) and I believe it to be one of the most depressing books EVER. There better be a great ending, damn it, or I am going over to Oprah's and burning it in front of her penthouse door!!! It's about this girl Dolores who had a horrible childhood and how she uses food to medicate her pain. Her dad leaves. She gets raped. Her mom dies. So she blows up to about 350 pounds and is a social reject. Then she goes to college and is further rejected... well there is a fat lesbian that falls in love with her, but this crazy bizzo kills all her fish. Anyway, she runs away from school, tries to kill herself, is found by her grandmother and sent to a mental ward for 5 years. She loses weight. Finds her ex-roommates ex-boyfriend, who she has been obsessed with, moves across the hall from him and ends up marrying him. Here is where my own feelings about marriage come into play: he loves her at first, is very tender and sweet to her... but then he starts taking out his frustrations on her. He belittles her. He forces her to have an abortion. He makes her feel like no one else will ever love her. He uses the power of her reliance on him to wield his power in a world where he feels powerless. He eventually leaves her after all her lies and things she has held back from him come out.
It forced me to ponder my future. I see myself married someday. Why? Because it is the social norm. If you aren't married, you are made to feel like no one wants you and you aren't good enough to live in a society where most people are coupled up. I also don't want to spend the rest of my days alone. I am a people person. I get lonely easily. Finally, I want to be in love again. I miss that feeling. I crave those butterflies.
We see it happen everyday. People fall "in love." It's all cookies and sunshine. They can't imagine their lives without one another. Maybe they kind of fall into a lull. They honeymoon is over... but do they really want to start that dating process all over again? I honestly believe many people get married for that reason. Pressure from family. They don't want to be alone again. They are comfortable. Marriage is "the next step." That is why the divorce rate is 50%!
I am 27 and I have yet to ever meet a person I could imagine seeing every morning. Someone I would want to combine my genetic code with. Someone who would eventually see the entire me and not go screaming into the hills. Someone who would be tolerant with my impatience. My insecurities. My pettiness. Man, if that guy exists, he would have to be hiding a pretty large halo under his hat.
If I could actually find someone that wonderful who saw the same wonderfulness in me, and then the unsuspecting bastard actually consented to marriage, how long would it last? My fear resides with getting attached to someone and having them leave me. Ok, I just read over what I wrote, and I am coming off like I have no self-esteem. That is not true. I know I am funny, smart, reasonably attractive and I have a big heart. I suppose a guy would be lucky to have me. My issue is that there are no guarantees in this life. There is that cheesy saying "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Ok, granted, that is true, but I don't want to lose! Getting married is a crapshoot, and I have never been a gambler.
I don't think people take marriage seriously enough. Gov. Ahnold and Dubbya are REALLY PISSING ME OFF with their anti-gay marriage stance. If people can find love in this world, enough so that they want to marry each other, why should anyone stand in their way!?!?! Fucking George Bush, who is sadly, the leader of our country only sees the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. So people that are born with a genetic preference for loving the same sex should not be allowed basic human rights? Give me an ever-lovin' break!!! I agree with Richard M. Daley, the mayor of my fine city when he stated that "the gay population contains our doctors, our lawyers, our teachers... fine, upstanding citizens. They should have the same rights as everyone else."
Ok, ladies and gentleman... my stance on gay marriage! But I digress. I guess I am most scared of finding someone I love so much that I can't see myself without them... someone I consent to marry, and then one day, he wakes up, looks over at me and can no longer see himself in my eyes. And he leaves. Or, on the flip side... he becomes someone else entirely. He is no longer the man I fell in love with. There are no absolutes in this life. I take chances everyday. I believe in fate. I believe in love. I believe these things will happen to me, but for now I am perfectly content to take each day as it comes. When I meet the right person, I'll stop being petrified and just roll the dice.