Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments

I’m not a big fan of happily ever after. I don’t mind happy endings necessarily in a story or a book. I like that Shakespearean law of resolution and balance at the end of the story. But I really, really want to gag at the notion that when the curtain closes all is perpetual bliss when the hero and heroine get married.

I mean, come on, get real.

I’m not going to deny it. I am a relationship phobic. I have a multitude of circumstances and emotional scars in my life that have informed my cynicism, that is equal parts disdain and envy of coupledom. But, here’s a little twist to that. I truly, truly, truly believe in love. Just not the saccharine, Disney-fied version that ends with a wedding.

Because… isn’t that when love really begins? I mean, sure the stories are always about the series of trials and tribulations for boy to get girl and stroll down that aisle. But, love isn’t about the cat and mouse game of wooing. It’s about real life. It’s making someone dinner at the end of a long work day. It’s doing the laundry and putting it away. It’s figuring out how to pay the bills and survive and thrive each minute. It’s integrating into and starting a family. It’s getting through grief and stress and anger. It’s accepting that the power of love is more amazing than a love story. It is the glue of normalcy. It is a truly beautiful, sacred splendor.

Love forgives the imperfections. It makes the trivial beautiful. If we are willing to take the leap and let go, we stop seeing with our eyes and see only with our hearts. Which is… isn’t that letting go of our mortality? Trusting a sense that isn’t part of our visceral makeup? And yet… there is something about love that makes us want to know another body. To see how it works. To see how it feels joy or a thrill. How it thrills us. How another being can make our nerves and senses come deliciously alive for a few fleeting seconds. It’s extraordinary.

We all want it. Even this cynic here. We all do. So why… really… why do we make up so many rules about why we can’t have it? First we deny ourselves and then our resentment prompts us to deny other people. Can I just say (inappropriately) how retarded that is? I mean of all the things in the world to decide we need to restrain and destroy… why on earth do we need to put a stop to loving and caring about another human being?

I don’t really have any burning desire to get married in this lifetime. If I’m lucky and I meet someone with whom I see myself living out the twilight of my days… sure that might be nice. There are some economic benefits that, as a single person, I can tell you right now are desirable. But I don’t feel like I need a ring and a piece of paper to tell me that I am a complete person… or if I end up pairing myself with another… that our relationship is valid. BUT, that’s me. I respect the fact that my negativity is mine. I have no right at all to tell any other couple that is how they should look at their life together. I have no right to define what they are or are not. I will always respect the choice for a couple to take that leap and trust in the belief that they can achieve happily ever after. Always. Because… well, because I am a coward when it comes to that. I really am. So I admire anyone, any one pair of human beings who can let go and just love with the trust that eternity could be theirs.

Why would anyone want to hold them back? Why does it matter if they are white or black or Jew or man or woman or whatever combination of the physical makeup of their souls? By being part of a couple, they do not seek to hurt other human beings. They seek only that love thing. To make dinner for each other. To take care of one another when they are ill. To hold each other when someone dies. To love a child. What is so awful about these things that so many people seek to destroy it?

I suppose there is that God argument. Right. See, I don’t believe in a God that thinks like that. In fact, when you start telling me that is what God is about, I just stop believing in God. Because I don’t want that God. And if he doesn’t want me, so much the better. Really. That is one hell of a bitchy, catty, petty, jealous deity. I make an effort to disassociate myself from mortals like that. I really have no interest in spending eternity with that attitude. Definitely not my happily ever after. Sorry. 

I suppose… at the end of the day… it is my envy of these couples who fight to get married that pricks at my soul and sympathy. Because they not only have the courage to enter a relationship from which I endlessly flee, but to overcome heart wrenching challenges to tell the world that they belong together. I envy them. I admire them. I hope to God that someday this country will get a fucking clue and realize that love is what it’s all about.