It’s not over

I hardly ever update this blog! First of all, the bf and I are doing alright these days. Better than alright. We’re very comfortable. So comfortable I find myself secretly wanting to make things more permanent.

I’ve spent a lot of time in therapy the past couple of years, and I’ve slowly started to realize that Mr. Right is the most well-adjusted person in my little universe. I had trust issues for quite a while with him, this is true. But ultimately I realized that beneath his stoicism, he really is a very dependable guy. The most dependable person that I know, despite his absent-minded tendencies.

So now what?

Now, it is the season for weddings. I am going to be in another wedding party next June (as a groomsman for my long-time friend who is a lesbian) and a bridesmaid the year after that for a flighty-but-funloving girl I’ve become closer to lately. I get to plan her bachelorette party for her, and I look forward to it because she has similar tastes to me, and she is not heaping on the pressure or anything.

“The Bride” is now a new mommy with an impossibly beautiful baby boy. It hasn’t really stopped her and her husband’s prima donna attitude from continuing to drive me crazy, but I bite my lip.

Yesterday, I had the honour and privilege to be fitted for a suit. Being a 5’1″ petite woman being fitted for a groomsman suit basically means that the person waiting on you at the store will hate you and you’ll have to keep sizing down until you find something (however uncomfortable) that will not fall off. It’s going to look strange. Very strange. But she’s like a sister to me, so I’ll shut up and take it.

Flighty-But-Funloving has elected to have no Maid of Honour, and the bridesmaids just have to pick out a li’l black dress. She wants to make as easy as possible for us, which I think is adorable- but I know she has an opinion about what she wants, so I’m gently trying to coax her to be a little bit more specific.

What else?

Long-Time-Friend’s wedding is going to have my other ex (we’ll call him Ex2) and some of his friends there, and I’m not really on comfortable terms with them. Partly because of Flighty-But-Funloving, who uninvited him from her wedding (he was a long-time friend of her fiance). Confused yet? She’s not well-liked with them. One of Ex2′s other long-time friends is the other “groomswoman”. Ex2 may or may not be conducting the ceremony, as he has some bullshit mail-order certification or something.

And…

I have generalized anxiety disorder. I’ve spent my life rolling over and playing dead for people whenever they piss me off, and then secretly stewing about it. You know, like creating a secret blog *cough*. Often people with overbearing personalities that will gladly (if unconsciously) take advantage of my silence to monopolize the entire relationship. SO I feel angry, then I feel guilty for being angry, then I feel stupid for not having done something about my anger, then I try to convince myself I have nothing to be angry about. And on and on. I’m also very paranoid, self-conscious, awkward, shy and terminally forgiving to people. I used to dismiss a lot of things my friends did. Now I’m starting to realize my annoyance at them is fully justifiable in some cases. I just don’t have the balls to give them what-for. But maybe I will eventually.

So what’s the deal with the new guy?

I’ve only been with him for a year, and things are okay… it’s hard for me to distinguish panic due to stress from  panic due to boyfriend. I’m in a very similar situation as the latter part of my 5-year relationship, so maybe I’m just gunshy. I don’t know.

The point is that my current BF has become VERY good friends with the groom. Bride is all giddy-happy about this, because it fits comfortably into her life like a form-fitting pink sweater.

The problem, however, is convincing her that me and current BF are not in a super fantastic position where we want to spend the rest of our lives together. We barely even understand each other. We love each other, but it is a long way from that solid “yes, I want to marry this guy” mentality. She’s still high on the post-wedding glee, so she has now become useless and annoying whenever I try to confide my relationship concerns/fears in her. She just has this “oh, you’re fine” attitude…I’m SLOWLY starting to make her understand.

What she needs to understand is that not every relationship is a whirlwind romance like hers (pfft!) and one year is only one year in some relationships. I don’t care if Groom proposed at the one-year mark- I don’t consider that a common thing.

The new BF is a nice guy- but he doesn’t open up easily. Or at all. This is the longest he’s ever been in a relationship, and there are still things we’re ironing out. In the end, I can’t guarantee it’ll last because I can’t say we’ve gathered enough info to make that decision yet.

So I am not so receptive when Bride tries to drag me kicking and screaming into a conversation about my hypothetical future wedding. That’s  a conversation where I just start saying the exact opposite of how she did it, just to piss her off and get her off the subject.

There’s also the problem that the new BF has very limited exposure to weddings, and his parents got married by a judge. Yes, I’m pretty unconventional, but I would probably want a little more than that.

Overall, the new relationship doesn’t feel very permanent. Partly me, partly him. But then again, only time will tell.

A little bit of catching up- not all of it, but some of it

Okay, so I lost track of this blog for two years, and the wedding has come and gone…so why am I writing here?

• The wedding has come and gone.
• I’m in a new relationship.
• I’m stressed out about where the new relationship is going.
• Recently-Married-Friend is driving me a little crazy and I’m starting to come to some conclusions.

There’s probably too much to explain, so I’ll just start with the wedding:

I have been going through a rough patch over the past year. And by rough patch, I mean perpetual nervous breakdown mode. There are a number of reasons, but basically the wedding couldn’t have come at a worse time. I thought for sure that all of the things happening this summer would keep me happily distracted- not so.

I am trying to decide how guilty I feel at the fact that I was fully compliant throughout the how “bridesmaid” process, but I was blatantly unenthusiastic. Bordering on sardonic even. On the one hand, the bride went through a lot of stupid shit with the groom’s family that put the whole thing on hold for like a year, but on the other hand, I have been listening to her talk about her “dream wedding” practically since I met her. She is literally one of those girls that had every last, minute, detail of her etched in her own brain, which apparently tuned her out of how totally not-bridesmaid-like some of her friends were.

I was a little pissy with the MOH…um…I don’t really like her that much.She was the bride’s bestest friend until highschool, and then for several years the bride and I saw a lot more of each other than they did. I wasn’t surprised with the decision, but I was…put out. It just kind of highlighted the fact that I saw her through several years of the transition of teen to adulthood, and still had to play second fiddle in the end.

I realize her and the bride didn’t ask for much, but at the same time, pretty much all of the bridesmaids lived in separate areas of the province.

Tangent: the small bar/restaurant down the street rents out its basement for parties. My boyfriend used it for my b-day, which was fine. Except the bride, after that, kept trying to get me to book it for her for other parties. The management at that place doesn’t know me- they know my BF. And my bf flat-out refused to do it for anything besides my birthday. And miss bride-to-be apparently couldn’t pick up a phone and call the place herself.

Flashforward several months: MOH sends me a very vague email complaining about not knowing where to book the shower. Rather than straight out asking me, I get the distinct impression that she wants me to book the room down the street. I politely point out to her that the groom’s PARENTS live just around the corner, and since SHE is the MOH, she could contact them and host it at their house. She did not like this idea. Then I found out she was CCing my emails to the bride. Nice.

In the end, the shower WAS hosted by the groom’s parents, and was a very nice affair indeed. They really wanted to make up for the bad vibes and I figured that was the case all along.

Rings

Rings are strange symbols, don’t you think? We can wear them casually, but it’s hard to get away from what they can ultimately mean.

The Christmas before I broke up with my highschool boyfriend (for the second time *sigh*), he asked me what I wanted, and Bride-to-Be (at the time) had a clauda (sp?) ring and I wanted one too.  A silver one.

Clauda rings are Irish wedding bands, if you don’t know; and depending on how they’re worn, they can signify the status of one’s relationship.  Being of Celtic decent myself, I liked that idea somehow.

I asked and he delivered- at Christmas he gave me a clauda ring.  It was beautiful, but big.  Really big.  It was a long time later before I clued in to what should have been obvious- it was a man’s ring.  He said I could get it resized, but my fingers are so small there wouldn’t have been much left to the ring, so I wore it on a chain.  It wasn’t really his fault- he was only 16 and didn’t know much about jewellery.

I broke up with him the following February when I met Ex, but I kept the ring for years, not really knowing what to do with it.  Finally, I gave it to one of my male friends.  It fit his finger perfectly.

The first Valentine’s day that I lived with my Ex in our first apartment, he gave me a ring.  Gosh it was lovely but ugly at the same time- lovely as an object, but ugly as a ring.  It had two garnet hearts on the sides, and on big one in the middle, surrounded by real diamonds.  He had tied it to my yearly box of Godiva chocolates, and before I had a chance to jump to conclusions, he cut in that it was a ‘promise ring’.  Someday, blah blah blah.  His father had found it actually, and never found the owner, so he gave to Ex to give it to me, who got it cleaned and appraised.  Worth about $500.

This ring was also big.  So I put it on a chain and wore it off and on for several years.

Near the end of our relationship, this ring went missing and I didn’t even notice.  It went missing because he took it, and kept it in his wallet.  He had gone well past his own deadline for proposing to me, and had kept it on his person to remind himself (torture himself really) of this thing that he couldn’t seem to do.

Monthes later, he bought another one.  An actual engagment ring.

However, by that point, I was done waiting.  I was done with a lot of things between him and I, and even though he had carried THAT ring around for something like a month, he didn’t pull himself together in time.  I never saw that ring.

Why did I do it? I often ask myself.  I was angry.  Because he had a real problem with comfort zones, and initiative.  I had watched him postpone and avoid many things in his life, and I didn’t like being one of those things.  I see a lot of myself in him- avoidance.  And that drives me crazy.  I’ve always tried very hard to change myself.  So I made the ultimate change, I guess.

When I think of rings, I can’t help but feel guilty- for my highschool ex, my current Ex, and I suppose they’ve become this reminder of how I run from certain situations.

I hope that someday that will change.  When I think of my current BF, it seems to be a possibility.

Come to think of it…

I can’t help but think of my own parents’ wedding- a very small affair with many relatives at the community church in my mum’s community.  I’m not sure how much her dress was, but the photos were just taken with a regular camera, the bouquets were small and simple, the reception was in the church basement.

I can tell by the pictures (many of which are blurry by the drunken hand of my uncle) that everyone had a great time.  The stories that I hear about my parents’ wedding have nothing to do with how much things cost, or how pretty the decorations were, but how much fun everyone had.

I can’t help but think of my grandparents, who got married in the middle of WWII- what kind of a wedding did they get? I certainly have never seen photos.  Their eldest child was born when they were still overseas in England.  I can imagine a humble wedding before a priest or judge, with an awesome reception afterwards showcasing British hospitality.

I can’t help but meditate on how much the concept of a wedding has changed, even in the course of a generation.  People seem ashamed to get married without a whole bunch of fanfare.  Much like Christmas, we get a high from going ‘all out’ and spending as much as we can to feel like kings for a day.

Me, I’m more concerned with the marriage part.  You get a lifetime of anniversaries and Valentine’s Days in that deal, on which to go crazy.  So much time to love and be loved.  That’s what I like.

The thing I keep re-iterating is “poor people get married too”.  And then they look at me like I’m retarded and don’t quite get it.  Of course I get it- but I want a wedding so I can be married.  We live in a country where we can marry just for love, and not just for obligation, or reasons of religion or culture. 

Much like we have to remind ourselves that the spirit of Christmas is giving, we have to remind ourselves that the reason for a wedding is loving.

Oy, I’m rambling.

Introduction

Okay, so here’s the deal.  A girl who used to call herself my best friend is getting married in about a year and 10 monthes or so (if I’ve got it right).  She has asked me to be her bridesmaid, but under somewhat tense circumstances- she and her boyfriend got together through the aid of my ex and I, when we were still together.  After breaking up with him (ending about a 5 year run), he continued to become closer to them, while I drifted farther away.  In this wake, I face several things: my ex as one of the groomsmen, a bride that is way, WAY more girly than I am (and hideously self-involved), a gal who could easily become a close friend of mine (if she wasn’t dating my ex) and the insufferable knowledge that once upon a time, not too long ago, everybody had expected my ex and I to be the ones tieing the knot.

Does it sound like a chick novel to you? Well, sometimes truth is just as hopelessly ironic as fiction.  Hence, the blog.