bad romance III: the wedding

"There goes somebody's miracle
Walking down the street
There goes some modern fairy tale
I wish it could happen to me..."
-Liz Phair, Somebody's Miracle

The girl I mentioned in my first Bad Romance entry, the one who found herself a boyfriend, married the guy yesterday.  It was weird to imagine her getting married.  I think she had one boyfriend in high school and two in college, one of them being the guy she eventually married.  That's not to say that someone should have a lot of boyfriends or girlfriends before settling down but I guess for me, because she hadn't been involved in many relationships, I just never saw her as a relationship kind of girl.  Much less marriage material.  But, there she was, dressed in white and exchanging rings and the whole scene felt so surreal.

I wasn't thrilled about attending the wedding because she and I had grown apart since we both moved away to college.  She and I used to be pretty close in high school and community college but after we both moved from our home town, life happened, as it always does, and circumstances weakened our bond.  It was almost like we were estranged or something.  I hadn't spoken to her in probably a year and so in some ways it felt like I was a wedding crasher, sitting down in a pew among strangers, watching foreign people unite in the face of God.  Plus, I had no idea who her groom was.  She met him in college so the first time I shook his hand was during the reception.  I surely didn't know him and I felt like I wasn't too sure I knew her that well, either.

The idea of sitting through the whole atmosphere of holy matrimony was also unappetizing.  Love and marriage is such a foreign concept to me now that I sat there, baffled, as the groom's father took over preacher duties and talked about God and love and the unbreakable bond the bride and groom were about to form.  Pictures flashed and tears were splashed and I just felt out of place.  My usual empty.  But there was this weirdness that found itself creeping up inside me.  I watched my high school classmate get married.  And I kind of wanted that for myself.  It was a celebration.  It was a big day for both of them, maybe one of the most important days in their lives and I wanted that, too.  I wondered if I'd ever have a big day like that, if I'd ever get to go on stage and put a ring on it and have people clap for us and beam and cry and bring out a three-tiered cake with whipped frosting and kiss her in front of friends and family and not feel so alone and show people that I wasn't an unlovable freak, like, "Hey,  I can be loved.  I can be cared for.  And I'm capable of caring, too.  I can be normal."

But I'm not normal.  And I'm not okay.

For the longest time I had given up on that white wedding scenario for myself.  I mean, I still had given up on it but the wedding was one of the only times I had let myself think about such a thing.  You see, not only had I given up on love and romance years ago but I hadn't let myself even think about it because I knew I was just putting myself in a bad place.  It's never fun to fantasize about something you can't have.  I could dream about living in a mansion with with a pooper made from platinum but that will never happen so why should I set my heart on it?  It was the same with love.

Then I thought more about it and realized maybe I just wanted the show, the celebration, the ceremony of it all.  But after all the food had been wrapped up and the gifts have been opened, I'd be left with a wife and a future with her and I don't even know if I want that.  I guess I'm a bit confused.  When I was younger, all I wanted was love but one day I realized that I was never going to get it and then upon further introspection I realized that I wasn't even sure I wanted it.  I think the concept of marriage is nice but I also think a lot of people don't fully understand how huge of a commitment marriage is.  It's wonderful but it also takes so much work.  It's like a second job.  You have to transition from taking care of yourself to help take care of someone else.  That's not to say you shouldn't take care of yourself but what I mean to say is you have someone else to consider rather than just yourself.  Marriage is tricky sometimes.  And it's forever.  And forever is not for everyone.

Is it for me?

The ceremony pretty much went how I pictured it:  I went with a mutual friend of mine and the bride's.  We sat down and made fun of everyone and then had some cake and left.  I was mostly concerned that I'd see a lot of people from high school.  I wasn't looking or feeling my best after my weight gain so I had hoped I wouldn't run into too many people looking as run down as I did.  But, really, it was mostly just her college friends so I felt relatively safe.  It didn't help the sense of being among strangers, though, because I didn't know anyone except the bride's family.

I was a bit surprised at how they geeked up the joint.  The bride was dressed like Liv Tyler straight out of Lord of the Rings.  They even had a LOTR cake.  And the groom had a Star Wars Millenium Falcon cake, which was quite delicious.  They also had a nice assortment of candy to choose from. After the couple exchanged vows, they sang Michael Buble's "Everything" to each other because they are both theater majors so they had to incorporate some musical number to seal the deal.  And then they walked out to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme and the audience was treated to a five minute slide show of their lives from tots to teens to happily engaged.

During the reception, as I stuffed my face, the newlyweds played those lame "how well do you know your spouse" games.  And then we talked to the bride for a bit and then that was it.  I grabbed a couple of bags of candy and we were on our way out.  It wasn't as miserable as I was expecting it to be and and the mutual friend even agreed it wasn't too bad, and she hates weddings.  Of course, the inevitable feeling of loneliness did present itself like I was expecting it to do.  And I think that's why I was so hesitant to go.  Their happiness would just be another reminder of my misery.  And then I felt bad because it's just so typically negative to feel that way, to not be happy for anyone.  I really need to get over myself.

But I promise this wasn't some kind of cliched realization about the loss of love while attending a wedding.  No, those pinpricks of loneliness were there far before the ceremony.  I've actually been feeling the emptiness a lot more over the past several weeks.  It'll come and go but it hasn't been too far from my mind.  It kind of just sweeps in like a whisper in my ear, reminding me how isolated I am, how far away I am from love.  How far I am away from God and any kind of love I thought I once had.  It feels like my heart is stifled, only allowed to slip between two spots:  bitterness and emptiness.  There's always a low-grade kind of grumpiness inside, a dysthymia that's poisoned not only myself but my outward emotions for others.  I can't seem to be happy for anyone.  I guess it's all a part of being a dead and disintegrating bastard.  It all fades in time.  The flesh and the feelings all whisk away.  But some feelings never die.  Envy is evergreen.  The dead are jealous of the living.  They want a warm body instead of the cold dirt.  They want a bouquet of flowers instead of a casket spray.  They want a heart injected with love, not formaldehyde.  I reach up and out with rotten hands and try to touch the face of a fantasy but it always slips just out of sight.

But the dead are discarded and life carries on for everyone else.  And as everyone else carried on outside the church building, I gave the girl who came with me my keys and told her to start up the car while I stayed behind to pee.  After I was done, I hit the candy spread hard.  I filled bag after bag with chocolate goodness, looking forward to easing the pain later on with cocoa-dipped jumbo marshmallows.  As I reached for another shovel-full of Oreo cake balls, an older lady stood next to me and filled up her own bag.

Looking over the assortment of sweets, she gave me a nudge, smirked and said, "Death by chocolate, eh?"

"You don't know the half of it," I said as I pulled the drawstring closed on the bag and then walked away.