(This is a companion post to my friend Renee's "Why?" blog post)
When I was young (pre-10), I had very little idea what marriage was. The household I lived in didn't contain any couples, we didn't have a TV and my exposure to the media was very controlled. I knew my schoolmates had fathers - these strange adult males in some type of relationship with their mothers - but it was all very fuzzy to me.
I dreamed of a companion, a true best friend with whom I could share anything and everything. As puberty kicked in, the idea of sexual intimacy was added into the dream but there was no vision of a wedding, or a stereotypical life as a couple with 2.5 kids, dog and suburban house. The first wedding I attended was as a bridesmaid to my godmother Coral and her recently-bereaved fiance Derek. I remember not really comprehending why these two people - in their 30s and 40s - were going through this whole thing.
Of course, I learned intellectually what marriage was as I grew older, and from time to time thought of meeting, falling in love with and being proposed to by various teen idols of the early 1970s. It was never anything I seriously imagined could happen, of course. At times, I truly believed I'd go through life completely celibate and alone.
Less than ten years later, I found myself in a nightmare. I was in a wedding dress, and Derek was walking me down the aisle towards a man I felt nothing for. I felt dazed and in disbelief. I crossed my fingers discreetly during the vows as I told the world I promised to obey this person, despite the screaming in my brain that I disagreed vehemently with that part of the marriage service - why didn't he have to promise to obey me too? It felt so wrong. Over the next few days, months, years, I cried a lot. The escape didn't happen until the early 1990s, when I finally broke free from the chains of conventionality.
I can't say I know exactly what Renee and other girls like her go through while growing up, but I don't need to understand it in order to appreciate how it feels when the dream falls apart.
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I really wonder how you managed to get yourself in a nightmare like that.
ReplyDeleteI guess it would only have been my utter disagreement with the vows as used untill not enough long ago that made me have an absolute disgust towards marriage. Simply nobody has ever, and will ever 'own' me.
Luckily the marriage vows and also marriage as a legal institution have changed to equalty, at least where we live.
Unfortunately in still too many places marriage is still far from an equal institution and unfortunately too many people just want to believe that different can be equal; it is not and never will be!
It took me the better part of my life to understand how overated conventionality is!
ReplyDeleteMuch better to "be" and be able to "breathe"!
alan
Growing up I was just like any other crazy, idealistic girl that had been fed too many tales of prince charming and white horses. I kind of idolized my Mom, and I want to grow up to be just like her. For all his flaws, and the abused he heaped on me at every turn my "Dad" loved my mother more than life itself. She seemed to have it all, and I wanted the dream.
ReplyDeleteBecause of my "Dad" I didn't start dating until I was in my 20s. Then each relationship left me hurt and wondering. Never even got close to marriage, let alone addressing some of my own issues.
In my 30's I was starting to feel like a "Christmas Cake" and my biological clock was TICKING LIKE THIS (stomping foot on the ground) and I'm not even close to getting married.
So then Earl shows up, and before I'd even met him in person (we met long distance through work) I knew if he'd have me I was going to marry him. Why? He listened to me. Miserable, rotten, heartless SOB, he listened to me and was supportive when I was telling him about my cat Monami. Before we ever met in person we spent the equivalent of several man months on the phone. I even had the 1000 dollar phone bills to go with it.
Yeah, I was a mess.
Fast forward to one of the worst days of my life. There I am having just performed life saving medical procedures on him and he treated me like I was disposable. I had to ask him for a hug because I was coming apart under the stress of being abused, working too many jobs all at the same time, and having had him cut me off from all my friends and family. All I was asking for was just a little emotional support and I wasn't getting any. None. So there I was dying to be held, and he just wouldn't.
I knew I was either going to have to start fighting for my own life, or he was going to use me up and throw me away like the trash his mother always claimed I was.
Things only got worse from there.
I don't know how I survived, I really don't, but I'm here and slowly healing.
As for marriage and the whole love, honor and obey thing. Well, I'm thinking some guy comes riding up on a white horse and I'm going to go in the opposite direction. Or at least I'm not going to be so damn drunk/stupid in love that I won't allow myself to see the writing on the wall. Plus he or she is going to have to pass muster with my friends and family.
So yeah, conventionality? Thinking, feeling persons hug me jacket of death. I had myself convinced for so long that day we married was the best, happiest day of my life. Little did I know it was the end of it. Would have been more humane if he'd just put a bullet in my head right then and there. So, I have, needless to say a very different view of time and space now. Often I wish I didn't. God I can't believe how much this hurts.