my best gal friend from high school is getting married on saturday. many of you know this, as i've been wrapped up in the planning for months now and it has made an obvious mark on my soul. i'm happy to see her so happy, you know, despite being a little jealous and a lot terrified. yes, absolutely, completely terrified. no one seems to understand why all of a sudden that is the emotion i'm having. shit, i don't really understand it either. plenty of friends are married now- it's all the rage, who else is getting on board? so why this time am i filled with the urge to skip out on the whole thing- toss my lovely, stem green, silk tricotine dress and flawless pink silk stilettos into a suitcase and take them away to someplace far more inviting and far less spectacular? i really don't know. i don't know a lot of the reasons why i've been feeling so removed and distant from the happiness surrounding her, or any of my newly married friends for that matter.
part of me can't get over how young we still are, and how i've always pictured these wonderfully grand lives for us all. i guess i really didn't look at everyone's collective future realistically. i mean seriously, how could i have ever expected that every girl i knew from high school through college would turn out to be a fabulously successful woman doing brilliant things in extraordinary places? it's one thing to hope that for yourself- and i do- perhaps to a fault sometimes. but to think that everyone would have the same goals and priorities was particularly naive of me. yes, quite naive.
i'm not saying that marriage at our age is a curse or a submission to the ordinary. please, don't misinterpret. what i am saying is that i can't imagine, at this point in my life, being ready to combine, compromise, and content myself with another person- forever. i want more time to be selfish and discover everything awful and wonderful about myself- by myself- and i think we all deserve that. it feels like everyone has decided not to know themselves anymore or to push for something outside of what they know. like comfort led the the next step- staying comfortable. i can't understand.
i'm like a lost little puppy in tornado of taffeta.
