Happy anniversary to me!

On this long weekend, fifteen years ago, I got married.

Crazy. I know.

The funny thing, though, is that when I think back to that day, I don’t really feel any sadness about something lost, I don’t feel regret for making a decision that pretty much changed my life, and I don’t feel anger at myself or him or the universe for the whole thing falling apart. Instead, I feel this kind of pleasantly amused and nonchalant nostalgia.

I remember that day like it was yesterday. I remember the warm glow of spending a full day in the presence of so many people I loved. I remember the thoughtfulness and generousity of the words spoken and gifts given by friends and family. I remember feeling beautiful and happy and so so ready, but most of all I remember the incredible certainty and conviction with which I spoke my vows, these intense feelings and thoughts that had been sitting in my belly and swirling around in my head for months and were finally scribbled down on the back of a used envelope the night before the big day. And remembering all that makes me smile. In fact, it even makes me laugh a little- appreciatively- at the boldness of my 20 year old self’s complete faith in our ability to be together forever, to love each other always, and to- no matter what- just figure it out.

It seemed surprisingly simple. You hear people talk about getting “cold feet”, about having doubts before they walk down the aisle. I don’t remember feeling even a drop of doubt or the slightest twinge of fear. I just knew. I knew he was the one for me. I was in love- and not in that cutesy, desperate, you complete me, I’m lost without you kind of way. I was a relatively independent girl with a fiery spirit and huge plans. I was not one of those young women who dreamt of playing house. I aspired to so much more than simply being somebody’s wife. I had grand visions of changing the world and leaving a legacy, and while I thought that I would certainly someday marry (after I had sufficiently changed the world), I never thought it would be so soon. But when I met him, and found his audacious, brilliant, quirky self to be my match, it felt like the most normal and natural thing in the world to just agree to be together. I believed with every ounce of my being that I was a better me with him by my side, invigorated but oddly at peace, challenged but unconditionally accepted, inspired, supported, motivated, affirmed, safe, at home, and I was quite certain that the two of us together would be completely invincible.

Here, far far away from my past, many people are surprised to discover that I was once married. It’s seems to some as crazy a confession as if I were to share that I did hard time for a string of B&Es or that I had a lion act in a traveling circus. Crazy! The further away I get from the life I once lived, and the more settled I become in creating this here and now, the less he and us come up in conversation, but they still do. It’s inevitable. We were together for over a decade and we essentially became grown-ups together, which means that much of our life story overlaps and many of our memories are intertwined. Also, there’s no escaping the fact that me as a one-time wife is an essential component of the me I am now. Those experiences have shaped me, and provided me with lessons and insights about love and life and heartache and decision-making and forgiveness and self-discovery and commitment and all that good stuff.

The most common question people ask me once they get past the initial “What??? Married?? For that long??” is, of course, “Why?”.  Why on earth would any twenty-year old kid deliberately choose to be with one person for the rest of your life? I mean, even if you’re in love? Why? The natural assumption many make when they discover another aspect of my past, namely, the fact that I grew up fully submerged in the evangelical subculture, is that we got married in order to avoid the big Christian NoNo of premarital sex, which is simply not the case. I have always been a bit of a flexible interpreter of biblical teachings, and my interpretation of the conditions of God-ordained intimacy was as personalized and lenient as my interpretation of scripture on eating habits and Sunday dress. We certainly didn’t go around announcing our night-time activities at bible study, and I suffered from the occasional pang of Christian guilt, and we probably waited much much longer than heathens would have, but official permission to go ahead and….you know…wasn’t exactly a big motivator. Plus, really, since when is marriage just about sex? It's about togetherness and sharing in all its aspects, right? Looking back though, I see that many non-Christian young folk in our state of in loveness would have probably opted to just move in with each other rather than to tie the knot. Moving in together would have most likely been frowned upon by our parents, as both our fathers were men of the cloth and familial reputation was somewhat of a priority, and also it wasn’t really something people in our social circle did, but an even bigger factor than all of that was the fact that my weird little young ego had this idea that if he decided he wanted to live with me but didn’t want to marry me, it was kind of like he needed a test-drive before he committed to the full deal, and my all or nothing self wasn’t exactly cool with that idea.

People often also ask what our parents thought, if they or anyone else tried to talk some sense into us. Aside from the fact that young marriage is totally typical of this subculture we belonged to, I don’t really think anyone could have talked me out of this decision I had whole-heartedly made with my big, bad grown-up self. At the time, I was in school and working as a waitress, and some random customer threw her head back in laughter when she discovered I was getting married. She scoffed at me and proceeded to tell me I was too young and didn’t yet know who I was or what I wanted, and I remember feeling patronized and ridiculed by a jaded, cynical, pathetic woman who just didn’t get it, and that experience made me furious and furiously determined. That’s the thing about being twenty, and that’s the thing about being in love. Nobody can really tell you anything, because you’ve got it all figured out or at least you feel totally capable of figuring it out, and you always think your situation is different from everyone else’s and that they just don’t get it. Plus, I think my parents saw us together and saw how much we loved each other and how happy we were and that was enough. They also knew me well and they knew how I made decisions, and I think they also knew that, really, it was my decision to make. The truth is that people could have told me their opinion and tried to share their wisdom but I don’t think I would have listened. In fact, I probably would have been more motivated to prove them wrong!

Sometimes, when I see other “child brides” (the term some of us have very affectionately dubbed our young, naïve, eagerly married selves) excitedly make the decision to walk down the aisle, there’s this wee little part of me that wants to tell them to slow down. I want to remind them that there’s no rush, and inform them that they might want to consider the fact that the male brain isn’t fully developed until age 25, which is also, by the way, right around the time when mental illness tends to reveal itself. I am tempted to encourage them to get to know themselves a little more before they enter into this kind of a union, so that they don’t compromise their dreams and goals. I want to tell them that the tone they set from the get-go will likely remain unalterable throughout their relationship, and I want to remind them that boundaries and roles and expectations become very difficult to change. But then I remember myself at twenty, and I think, really, what’s the point?

What’s the point, not only because they, like me, won’t listen; not only because it’s not really my business in the first place, and they’re right- I probably don’t get it; not only because they might be one of the lucky ones whose young love grows securely and solidly and healthily in the same direction, but most importantly, because no matter what happens, even if they are not one of the “lucky ones,” when it comes right down to it, intense, fully committed, trusting, brazen young love is this ridiculously beautiful and powerful thing that sometimes seems irrational or completely insane but is something you really only ever experience once, and who wants to get in the way of that?? I mean, I am very much committed to keeping an open heart and an open mind. I still believe in the awesomeness of love, and there’s a part of me that believes that I will someday get the chance to experience true love again, but I recognize that it will be of a very, very, very different variety. And there’s no value judgment here. It is tempting to either romanticize or scoff at young love. All love, in its different forms, is good and great. This is just an observation, rooted in my own memory. But the truth is that no matter how hard I try to resist cynicism, to resist the temptation to protect myself from disappointment and heartache, to willingly and fully let someone in, I will never ever ever ever be able to enter into a relationship with the same level of unconditional trust and brazen faith that I did when I was twenty. And again, it doesn’t matter if you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It just is what it is.

I guess what I am saying is that I can look back on that day fifteen years ago with my pleasantly amused and nonchalant nostalgia because I can now, finally, after the hurt and the bitterness have long passed, admire my young self’s fearlessness in wholeheartedly pursuing love. I can respect her certainty and her completely unconscious choice to live from her heart. I can appreciate the commitment she made to be with another that wasn’t based on rational cost/benefit analysis and future thinking, but also wasn’t based on flighty in-the-moment feelings, but instead was firmly rooted in this kind of faith in her own knowing. And I guess what it really comes down to is that all love- like, the really really good and true stuff- can never be properly explained or understood or predicted. You can make lists of criteria to try and avoid past mistakes, you can evaluate compatibility and predict the likelihood of relational success, you can try and weigh which kind of love is a higher love, but all that caution and rationality can eventually dilute that deep down knowing that we often- at some point- stop trusting, and it can taint that real deal love with fear. I mean, it’s love, not a freaking business deal. No matter how much you try to negotiate and evaluate and predict, it’s always going to be complicated and flawed and maybe a little messy, and there’s always going to be bits of good and bad layered together. The big point here, which I am hopefully finally getting to, is that when I look back on all of it, even the messy and broken bits, I recognize that it was totally worth it. Love- even when it falls apart- is almost always worth it.

More later.