Wedding Bell Blues

Where I’m from, we have Mud Season, Black Fly Season, Tourist Season and Winter. A fifth, unofficial season, Wedding Season, usually bridges Black Fly Season and Tourist Season. I can confidently report that Wedding Season is in full swing. Living in Massachusetts, I keep tabs on most of my friends through Facebook and for the last two years, I have gradually watched as an old acquaintance, Dave, planned his wedding.

The thing that amazes me is that the last time I saw Dave in person was about five years ago at a reunion. At that time, I was still working in the hotel and had decided to pursue my Master’s degree – and Dave was married to his college sweetheart. In the same amount of time it took me to apply to graduate schools, complete my program of study, gain my Master’s degree, and move to Massachusetts, Dave ditched his first wife, met someone new, realized he wanted to try married life again with her, and is now heading into the home stretch before his wedding day.

I don’t want to be cliché and reference the march of time, but I don’t think I really internalize how quickly time passes until a comparison like this smacks me in the face. It makes me wonder what I’ve been doing with my life. I used the same number of years as Dave’s change of romantic partners to focus on my education and to expand my knowledge, my skills, and my experience. But I wonder if I haven’t been too selfish? Why does it feel like I have to choose between having a relationship and having a career when it seems like other people very happily and competently manage the two.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was never the type of girl who dreamed about her wedding day. Even as a kid, I was focused on tasks. My favorite toy was my Fisher Price cash register. I never played house; in fact, my best friend Maybelline and I would pretend we were city planners, or fashion designers, or we’d make and sell handmade greeting card for ten cents. Later, my focus was keeping my grades up so I could go to college and get away from the small minds in my hometown. As far as romance was concerned, I had one boyfriend for a total of six weeks before I went to college. I always thought the story about my Grandmother going home after a blind date with my Grandfather and reporting that “she had met the man she was going to marry” was sappy, and I outwardly scoffed at my friends who sighed over “Brides” magazine and planned their dream weddings. To this day, all I have for wedding daydreams is a vague notion that I would want the ceremony to be held at Castle in the Clouds in Moultonborough, NH and a list of songs that I would eviscerate the DJ for playing. I suppose I’ve always held the belief that I would get married “someday,” but now I’m starting to wonder. By now even Maybelline, my childhood co-entrepreneur, has snagged a husband. And what rubs it in about her marriage is that she met her husband at college, the same college I attended, the same college that touts that 13% of graduates meet their future spouses there.

Would I sound completely pathetic if I wondered aloud (in writing) whether there is something wrong with me? Am I not open enough to love? Am I too scared? Am I too intimidating? Too unapproachable? Too experienced? Too much of a ball-buster? Not sexy enough? Not flirtatious enough? Not demure enough? Not in the right place at the right time? Have I replaced that instinct to have a partner and a family with a work ethic?

In my own defense, I think I am a pretty interesting and unique person. A few weeks ago, late on a Sunday afternoon, I had a strange feeling like the combination of anxiety and indolence and incarceration… and after analyzing it for a bit, I realized that foreign feeling was boredom. It struck me so strongly because I truly cannot remember the last time I felt bored. I am not often idle. I may fill my time by writing poetry, or making collages, or baking, or exploring a new place I’ve never been, or sewing, or photography, or going to a museum, or reading, or browsing for antiques, or making obscure Monty Python references, or prowling around in a cemetery. I generally get to the end of the day and realize that I wish I had ten more hours in the day to try all of the things I wanted to do. I can entertain myself just by thinking. I try to take every opportunity I can to learn something new. And I try to surround myself with people who have a wide range of pursuits and experiences to stimulate my mind. I’ve said it before and I will probably say it a hundred times more: as long as you know me, you will never have occasion to say that I dumbed you down.

Yet, with all of my talents, and my education, and my inhumanly wide range of interests, not to mention my ability to drink beer all day long without getting drunk, I remain alone. I’m not unhappy about it, but definitely feeling a little insecure.

On the up side, I got a fortune on the underside of a Magic Hat bottle cap the other night (yes, while drinking to not get drunk) that heartens me a bit. The best advice I could receive right now, so good that this bottle cap has a permanent residence in my spice rack where I will see it every day?