TimeZones and Marriage

It’s weird. I got married 5 months ago. My friend’s sister got married 11 months ago, and now my friend (whose sister I just mentioned) is getting married in 2 months.

In 20 years, 10 years, 5 years, possibly less, we’ll look at each other, tell our kids, and spouses and selves, that we all got married in the same year, what a short time, what a shared experience.

But living in it now, it’s not at all like that. It seems like forever. That her sister was married and settled so long ago, that I got engaged so much after that (even if it was just two and half months) that I had a long tortuous 4 month engagement, and while I was already engaged my friend dated about 6 guys, sagas included, before she got engaged 2 months ago.

There was so much life lived during that time, so much differences, so much anxiety, happiness, waiting, hoping, wondering, aspirations, ifs…on all our parts, that were unique to ourselves.

…and I’m not sure when it becomes all relative, but there’s a big difference between someone married 1 week, 1 month, 2 months, 6 months, a year…   and between the 3 of us, were living in different time-zones.

So in years from now, when we’ll say “Ye, we all got married then, all around the same time, same experience” I think we’re cutting our lives short.

Or maybe that perspective years later, will give me perspective on the one I have now.

The Runaway Bride

I have disappeared. I will acknowledge that.

 

 I don’t post on my blog

Respond to emails

Call my friends back

Return my students quizzes the next day

Do basic chores

 

I don’t exist or function as a human being.

 

My friends call me a Blissed-Out Bride.

 

I’ve turned into the worst cliché.

 

Now I’m not here to excuse myself, but rather explain.

 

I think I’m functioning.

I think I’m responding

I think I’m being responsible

I think I’m still all here.

 

But looking at my performance of the last month objectively…I’m not.

 

The thing is I THINK I am.

 

It’s not intentional. I want to do all the things I’m supposed to do; I mean to do it. I really mean to write, to call you back, but the time just disappears and I didn’t do anything, but space out.

 

It’s the weirdest phenomena.

 

And even weirder is how not me this whole thing is. I’m not the googly-eyed, gushing, glowing, giggly type. I’m the analytical, unemotional, detached, logical type.

 

My behavior goes against all my principles.

 

And it’s a great thing.

 

My apologies again. J

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why You Should Get Engaged, Reason #23

I recommend engagement to everyone.

 

Not for the blissful utopia that it is.

 

Where the entire world seems to fade away, have no significance and you seem to float along with a lingering smile.

 

Where you are the center and the world just revolves.

 

Where there is purpose to Monday and Wednesday and Friday, and any other day he chooses to surprise me.

 

Where the sun shines even when it doesn’t, and you get away with vague answers like, “Ummm…..”

No, get engaged because it will reveal all your social insecurities, and then trounce them!

I went to a close friend’s wedding last night. Now I don’t generally consider myself to be that inhibited,

I laugh heartily,

say what I mean,

run down Boro Park streets,

sing along to the music in stores you get my drift…

And last night I broke free. I have never danced at a wedding like I danced last night.

My friend (the Kallah) wanted to know when I turned so ________. I told her I got engaged.

I did whatever I wanted, disregarded the hierarchy of the circles (family first, then cousins, then friends, then acquaintances that have to show their face)

My other friends kept telling me to behave, but I didn’t have to, Hello, I’m engaged…it doesn’t make a difference who looks at me. They were secretly jealous that they couldn’t let go…well not really secretly, it was pretty open.

Another friend warned me to watch myself because the creepy mustachio wearing video dude couldn’t stop following me…and the camera guy got in several shots himself.

A friend of a friend who is a professional dancer couldn’t stop commenting at my skill.

And random strangers came over to tell me, how it was beautiful how I was misameach the Kallah.

I could have never done that had I not been engaged. Yes, I would have had a lot of fun at the wedding. I would have danced my heart out, because she’s my friend and I want to make her happy on her wedding day…but with inhibition, I’d have stopped and started, letting go and then holding back. I’d have been glancing around surreptitiously wondering who has potentially looking at me, what are they thinking, how much to I have to watch myself if I want to get married…

I know a lot of you out there are going, “Who cares what people think, do what you want!”…but you’re reading my blog, and blogs aren’t standard reading material for the Jewish population at large, so you’re off this bell curve in terms of standard deviation…

So yeah, get engaged. It’s so liberating…until the wedding, that is.

Disengage

I’m writing this piece on behalf of my friend who would like this to serve as a public service announcement.

 I’m talking to you single girls out there (and I suppose myself), who intend on getting married through the shidduch dating system, and to engaged girls who are doubting their sanity.

 Engagement is not the blissful utopia everyone makes it out to be. It is a façade and institution foisted on single girls by married people, because if people really know what it’s like to be engaged, no one would get married.

 Ok, I’m talking very cryptically and ominously, let me put it in simple words.

 In shidduch dating, you know the guy ranging on average from 7-12 dates, and then you agree to marry him. You don’t know the guy from Adam, yet you are agreeing to cosign your life away, and you are SO happy about it. You wake up the next morning and you think.

 ”Oh My God, what did I do, how soon can I return this diamond laden bracelet?!?!”

 And then later in the day you think,

 ”Well, he’s kinda nice…and cute…and I sorta like him in a first impression type way…”

 And you’re ok for the time being.

 And then you go shopping with your mother, and she is all serious educating you on the different styles of linen, thread count, pattern blah blah blah, your logical brain once again rears and you respond emotionally (you are a woman after all) and want to start bawling and throw a tantrum.

 So yeah, that’s what really happens.

 But what us single girls see from our engaged friends is

 ”Oh My G-d, He’s so cute…he told me…I bought him…We went…I love…”

 Unless you are completely shallow and stupid and flighty and have no idea what life is about, the previous statements will an Academy Award worthy performance. There will be moments that it is truly sincere, but you really cannot let the world know how much you are flipping out, and how much you are doubting, because HELLO, you are engaged, no more crises for you. You averted it, and you are on the way to living your own happily ever after.

 So if single girls knew what engaged friends were really going through, they wouldn’t be so hasty to join the bandwagon, and therefore it is very important that this show be longest running one ever.

 I wish I could be a Romantic and say there’s something wrong with my friend, but considering her and two other friends who got married recently, they all had their fair share of “moments”, and they are all different types. And yes, some have it worse than others, but everyone has them…and you will most probably still go through with the marriage and will most probably be happy and wonder years later what you were thinking…but during the engagement you will be a nervous choleria.

 So if you’re engaged, just know you’re normal and there’s nothing wrong with you. And those who still single, well, this is the picture, don’t pity yourself so much anymore and be nicer to your engaged friends.

 (I asked my friend to guest post this, and she declined…I don’t really know what I’m talking about because well, simply I’m not engaged and never was, I don’t really know the feeling. I did try some method acting techniques to put myself in the mindset though)