Mar
31
Breaking the Rules of Engagement
March 31, 2005 | |
This is Not a Ralph Lauren Ad.
My engagement ring was chucked across the room at me in a bout of unrestrained frustration.
That is how I was proposed to. It was so bad I made up some hearts-and-roses bullshit story to recount to my girlfriends.
Naturally we eloped. Maui. The beach. Rainbows and all.
There was no cake.
My dress was unaltered and uninteresting. I hired a German advertising photographer to shoot the occasion. Memoirs of our wedding day captured like a Ralph Lauren ad–
The epitome of false advertising.
I wrote no vow of unrequited dedication. And neither did he.
There were no onlookers to witness my ultimate deception.
Our union was never consummated.
As I recall, we went to bed early that night.
You see, marriage had a tainted element of which I had no desire to reckon with.
The ominous phrase "Til death do us part," too often taken too lightly.
Ultimately setting the happy couple up to lose.
More than anything I doubted the construct of marriage and the impossible puritanical standards set forth by the pilgrims, or the colonists, or whoever those God-fearing settlers were.
Times had changed yet the institution of marriage remained an ideal apparently not actualized by 50% of America.
This very notion, along with various other less-than-positive examples set forth by mom and dad, prompted the procrastination of our wedding date.
First 6 months, then a year, and then two.
Until suddenly–our wedding date became indefinite.
Had it been up to me, I would’ve remained forever in the grey area of coupled-up yet unwedded bliss. The partnership unrecognized by state law otherwise known as "living in sin."
Bonded by those invisible, easily unwound ties of respect, faith and understanding of boundaries that could not be crossed.
Left up to me, I would have regretfully declined this proposal.
The ultimate invitation to take each other for granted.
Instead I swallowed my fear.
After all, he and I were in love. And he was the marrying type. He adored me.
P. was an angel–The quintessential catch.
Had I thrown him back, I feared I would never come across love like that again.
Yet this uncertainty lingered, gnawing away at my conscience.
Back then I dismissed it as cold feet; an irrational, yet common fear.
In retrospect, the plain truth is now painfully clear.
A simple concept I regretfully chose to deny:
I DID NOT WANT TO GET MARRIED.
Truth be told, I never officially accepted my fiance’s proposal.
I threw my arms around him, I cried, I became breathless.
I acted like you were supposed to act during what should’ve been the highlight of my life.
But these responses were also oddly similar to those displayed by a victim drowning.
Grasping for safety…suffocating…fearing for dear life.
It was in this moment, that very instance of my husbands request for my reluctant hand in marriage that the escapeartist was born.
Suddenly there were two. And my identical, self-sabotaging twin came to be.
There was Christina, the rational girl.
The one who knew a good thing when she had it and would blindly plunge into to wedded bliss, regardless of uncertainties.
And then there was the Escapeartist.
The alter ego girl running as fast as she could, in the opposite direction.
Who developed fixations on men totally wrong for her.
Who drowned her hesitations in tequila and unabashed flirtation with waiters and bartenders and handsome co-workers 8 years her junior.
Indeed, the escapeartist had her own agenda. And she was relentless.
It was she, the alter ego that was conjured by the cries of her drowning sister.
So she came to her rescue. Saving her from the ominous waters of intimacy and that killer whale called marriage that was sure to devour them both.
And as only an escapeartist could–she disappeared from the confines of restraint,
lost between the confusion of who she really was,
and who she wished she could be.
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