Don’t Invite Me To Your Wedding Or I Will Do This
A weird thing I do at weddings (that maybe isn’t that weird)
Maybe this is a messed up thing to do, but I can’t help it.
Whenever I’m at a wedding, while the couple-to-be-wed is at the altar all engulfed in this cloud of love and intimacy (and also anxiety and make up and armpit sweat) and they’re holding hands and they’re looking into each other’s eyes while the officiant goes on about holy matrimony and other things you think you understand but don’t, and their bodies are physically present but their souls have completely left the planet and ascended into this realm in which only the two of them exist (I know, because it happened to me) and they are thinking OhmygoshOhmygoshOhmygosh and their mouths are dry and their hands are sweaty and they’re so in-the-moment but out-of-this-world that they are having to remind themselves to breathe— while Love in its purest form is present and “the happiest day” of their lives thus far is taking place,
I am thinking about their unhappiest days.
They are parroting the priest or other online-ordained special someone, “for better or for worse,” and even though they are in one of the “better” moments, I am picturing the “worse” moments.
I am picturing the exhausting conversations that are at a stalemate 45 minutes in, the starting line now so far away you can hardly recall what it even looked like.
I am picturing the peak of a feeling that’s been brewing for weeks, maybe months, (maybe years if she is honest), the kind of feeling that sits below the surface like black sludge and oozes out through any slight opening. Like laundry close to the hamper but not in it. Like dishes that sit unwashed.
It’s not about the thing. It’s about what the thing represents. It’s not about what it’s about right now. It’s about what it’s always been about.
I am picturing her, staring at a random spot on the floor, urging this eye-contactless hypnosis to hold off the tears, biting the inside of her lip and swallowing back the things she wants to say as she remembers the vows they took. I am picturing his eyes closed, jaw clenched, lips pursed tight with breaths slow and heavy and loud, no doubt confused and grasping, trying to match what happened with what is happening.
I am picturing the reason we take vows in the first place. (Would we need to promise before an audience if it were easy?)
I know this is a weird thing to do, but I can’t help it.
I am obsessed with living & witnessing the fullness of what it means to be human, which is, as far as I can tell, not just feeling joy but also feeling pain.
And so maybe this is an objectively weird thing to picture at weddings.
But maybe not.
Maybe I am picturing the same thing as anyone else: love (and, okay, maybe the open bar and Aunt Deedee dancing.)
Maybe picturing these deeply painful, hard, moments that are inevitable when two childhoods, two Egos, two moralities, two worldviews sign up to do life together— actually is picturing love.
Because only love can hurt that bad. Only love will work that hard, go that far.
Indifference. Anger. Hate
They cannot survive the journey. They will not make the trek.
“I do,” they say.
But they don’t yet know what that really means. How could they? They can’t. No one understands what it means to live out those vows until they are living them out. No one can feel the weight of those promises until the weight is upon them. Until they are swimming silently but furiously through their minds for something to say out loud, tempted to just choose silence or sass but remembering those darn vows.
This is the paradox of love and vows: that we need them both not for the beautiful times, but for the tough. We need love most not when we are together at the altar, but when we are as far apart as it is possible to feel. The vows become necessary in the moments it’s hardest to keep them.
And so maybe I’m not such a weirdo after all. Maybe actually, this makes sense. And maybe now, you too will picture the couple fighting or crying when they kiss.
Enjoy ;)