Everyday I Think Of My Wedding Day
I know how harmful the notion that all I’m meant for is marriage. I’ve deconstructed the notion that I must be a wife and a mother. I’d be okay not being one. But everyday I think about my wedding day. Everyday I imagine putting on a white dress and heels and professing my heart to lover. How the day would go and who I’d invite. I think of my lover standing there waiting for me with that same childish grin I fell for even on the very first night.
I believe in marriage and commitment. I believe in the effort that it takes to choose someone day in and day out. If love was easy it wouldn’t be worth it. I don’t mean that in a way that venerates toxic or harmful love, but in awareness of the full spectrum of the human experience. Our dreams and our plans do not stop because we fall in love. They may shift and grow, but discarding everything you want for a partner is not what I wish to tell people when they as about my love story. More so I mean that no aspect of life is without its challenges. My Russian grew up in a mostly stable two parent immigrant household. I grew up with a single immigrant but mostly americanized mother. He grew up in New England, I grew up in the South. Our stories are now intertwined, but so much of how we navigate life is shaped by our differences.
My Russian is far more reserved than I. I am boisterous and loud. I scream from the rooftops and talk too loud in public. I don’t often apologize for taking up space and my failures are just as public as my successes. I speak Spanish with terrible grammar hoping to be corrected and I ask sometimes invasive questions about strangers in an effort to learn everything and anything about every and anyone. He is friendly, far more than I am, but he’s not confrontational. He’s funnier than I and more natural with it too. He holds his emotions close to his chest and doesn’t boast or brag. I say it’s his lack of internal monologue, he says mine keeps us up too late. He’s fearless and I’m anxious. I tell him he’s corrupting me and he says I need to think less.
Thinking is all I seem to do. I think and I worry and I dream. The night that we officially met I knew he was mine. I wanted him and every part of me felt that he was as much mine as I was his. When he kissed me on front porch at 5am I felt it then that whatever we became would change me, mark me forever. I haven’t decided if that’s a good thing, but how lovely is it to love. When I left Boston and moved back to Miami my biggest fear was leaving him, but he wasn’t in the city either heading back to campus to start his senior year of college. I think this year spent mostly apart was partially for the best. We were attached instantly. Spending my final weeks in the city all over each other squeezing in months worth of dates into just 17 days. So much so that upon bringing up the discussion of our anniversary he thought we’d met much earlier in the summer.
A relationship being dependent on communication has forced me to think more about the words I use. I write and I write a lot, but when you word dump on a page that’s not the same as learning how to healthily manage conflicts and disagreements. How powerful it is to reframe how I interact with my lover from the vicious and bitter outbursts I’m used to with a more whole tame message. I don’t want this to blow up and he wouldn’t respond in a way that matches that fiery battle I was seeking. Instead we seek to actually understand each other and get to the root of the conflict. This is all quite new to me. In my family you scream and yell and drive knives into each other’s hearts and then turn over like nothings happened. The bitterness lingers of course, but it’s family you have to love and forgive each other.
Dating and friendship have taught me so much of how to be a better person. I don’t have the framework of how to love and how to communicate. I have a framework for what not to do. Don’t nag, but also don’t let yourself be walked over. Don’t curse and fight, but also make sure they know you mean what you say. Don’t shrink yourself, but also don’t be too much. My first boyfriend always said that I sought out fights, that I could never just let disagreements be that I always needed to say something. Now this man had his fair share of red flags, but he saw defensive angry little me. In fact I think our downfall was that was all he saw.
Last summer before Russian and I officially met a friend of mine was constantly talking me off cliffs. He was incredibly grounded and strong on his morals. He held his ground and was secure within himself and his values, he never shouted or ever got truly angry. I found this so bizarre until we talked about his childhood and he explained that his family weren’t dysfunctional or angry people. When all you know is dysfunction you assume everyone grows up this way. When chaos and instability become comfortable peace and stability feel like a scratchy wool sweater. Nice to look at, but you can’t wear it for long. I know that if not for his friendship and his advice, Russian and I would not have made it. I spent a lot of last summer deconstructing some of my views on men and learning how to see them as whole people with full and vast life experiences. I even learned how to talk to them and interact with them outside of the boxes I had neatly categorized them into.
On the third day of Russian and I’s 17 days together I threw a party for a friend of mine. He came late not arriving until nearly midnight, but in the hours before the guys I had spent the past couple months terrorizing arrived at my Dorchester apartment. After a couple drinks and the winding down of the clock I took a moment with both of them apologizing for all I had done to them. Between the ghosting and the obsessing and my up’s and down’s we had grown friendships. Ones I wasn’t sure I deserved, but I knew that if there was a god and if the universe was really about balance I needed to take accountability for my actions. Even on the third day I imagined Russian and I having forever and I knew then that if we didn’t make it long it would be in part because of me. How I act, how I talk to people, the boundaries that I cross.
I hate the notion that those men were stepping stones to my lover. They were valuable connections that pushed me to do the work, pushed me to be better and do better. If not for the foundation that those friendships gave me I wouldn’t have done the work necessary to have a stable foundation for myself. I would be first a bad friend to Russian and then a bad lover. I’ve been a bad friend and a bad lover. Meeting Russian was one of the many confrontations that I needed to face myself. The greatest part of meeting new people is facing yourself, the good and bad parts. Learning to confront all of you. Part of why I am so loud is I dissect these intricacies outside my brain. Sometimes by putting pen to paper and other times over a few drinks.
Being comfortable with drinking is new to me. In the past year the only times I’ve been drunk outside of the last weekend I was with Russian. All the statistics running through my head and all the anxiety keeps me from being comfortable with truly anyone, but him. Though other statistics caution me about this complete trust he’s often my safe space. I finally let my walls down and cry over silly things getting sappy on beaches and park benches. He coos at me and holds me while I talk his ears off. I bring up the words he doesn’t remember saying and he gives me an honest apology. I kissed his cheeks over and over and he holds me like he’s scared I’ll slip away. Like he’s aware our time alone is short.
I never dream more about forever except on these days. We spend all day in bed no worries, no stress. Round after round spread out between inside jokes and gossip and brainstorming baby names and listening to every song we’ve ever heard. Our first day like this he said it’s “our garden of eden, but there’s no apple.” I mused about how selfish it would be to live in those 24 hours forever. Months passed and every moment together tops the last. Every conversation I swear he gets funnier, I swear his teasing affects me more. I hope I feel like this forever. Truly seen, for all my faults and failures and my delights and triumphs.
For so long I planned my wedding thinking about every little thing I wanted and how the day would go for me. Now I think about how we’ll do it together. How we’ll wake up that morning. What he eats for breakfast while I start the arduous task of getting ready. The water that he brings me like always. He’ll fill the glass, take a gulp, fill it again, take another drink in front of me and then let me have the glass until he’s thirsty again. He’ll busy himself, maybe last minute finishing up his vows, and then he’ll walk over to me while I finish my makeup and kiss my head singing along to whatever song I have playing. He’ll queue one of his own next then laugh when I ‘don’t get it’ and queue a couple more.
When I daydream about my wedding usually it’s the actual event. I’m torn between a micro wedding and elopement. I question the logistics of what city and what time and who’s there. Lately though I think about how I want to cherish that morning with him. I want to get ready together and go back and forth about topics that seem totally random to everyone except us. I want to kiss him over and over before putting my lipstick on under the guise of not messing up my makeup when I put it on, and then I want him to steal a kiss ending up with rose tinted lips like always. We help each other get dressed and I sneak a photo of him because he can’t tell when my camera’s out ever.
We argue and disagree and go through rough patches like any couple, but I think the choice in loving someone is continuing to choose them. It’s not shrining yourself but expanding your mind and heart to accommodate room for understanding. When I’m upset I think this is what people mean when they say marriage is hard. How you can love someone so much and still be wounded by them. How there’s always a risk of being left and forgotten.
Many choose not to engage in love and relationships out of this fear. I know it’s paralyzed me at times. I always worry about being hurt or ignored or left or hated or unwanted. The only way out of this is unfortunately through. It’s choosing to keep loving even when you’re betrayed. Choosing to be kind even when you’ve been taken for granted. Doing the hard work because it must be done. I dream about my wedding and elopement and the rituals of domesticity, because there is comfort in knowing that the fruits of your labor are understood and appreciated by someone else. Because there is comfort in knowing that even through the hard parts someone chose me. That over and over, day in a day out we chose each other.
I think of “Peace” by Taylor Swift during my bouts of depression. All these people think loves for show, but I would die for you in secret. I’m fully aware that my abrasiveness is often a mask for vulnerability, but I don’t wan’t the world to know me truly. I don’t want to bear my soul and my deepest darkest secrets to people who don’t care. I’ve never wanted a big wedding and a big show because I want my love to be mine. I don’t need anyone to ‘get’ what I love about my Russian I love him misunderstood. I love him when doesn’t have the words to express himself. I love him even when he confuses me.
Time and time again we’ve chosen each other. So when I dream of our wedding day, I dream of us embarking on the first step of forever, formally. I dream of us as we are. Perhaps some wrinkles around our eyes as our skin slowly loses its youthful elasticity, but with the same forever young souls that fell in love under the warm blanket of east coast humidity.
