this sunday my friend R got married. R and i have been friends since the first day of college, some 12 (!!really?!!) years ago, and while that is less than the 16 years i have known many of you, my small but important group of blog readers, that is still a long time. R is a part of my everyday life, she has been for the last six years, and we have very much wandered into adulthood together, both at college and here in chicago. i was MOH in R's wedding, a job which she will also serve in mine. her wedding was fun and beautiful, and totally 'them'; the bride and groom were ridiculously happy and in love, and a good time was had by all. i am very very happy for her newly married status- i adore her new husband K, they are a perfect fit, and though i am not a huge fan of his children (they are cute, but they are also spoiled, totally undisciplined and ridiculously hard to control), i know that she loves her stepsons very much and they love her. over all they make a lovely little family.
so why did i wake up the morning after her wedding feeling so depressed?
i feel like i have lost my friend, which i know is stupid, because things will not be any different now than they were for the last three years that she has been dating K, and, on an even more relevant note, i am in my very own happy, headed-to-the-altar relationship. so why the blue mood?
well, here's what my therapist thinks. we had something of a breakthrough in our last session. we figured out that absolutley all of my relationships are deeply affected and influenced by my fear of death. not just loss, but death. and not my own death, but the death of people around me. this is not really a breakthrough to many of my loyal readers, as i have discussed this before, but we did get more specific with the exact impact of my fears. i am freaked out about everyone around me getting married (myself included) for several reasons: 1. there is a part of me that thinks that anyone would be crazy to put all of their emotional eggs in one basket and count on one person to be there for them for the rest of their lives. i did that with my mom, and look where it got me. 2. being someone who has an extremely difficult time living in the present instead of worrying about the future, i see this rash of weddings as one in a predictable timeline of major life phases- everyone gets married, then they have kids, then some of them get divorced and remarried, then they start to die off. i know this is extremely morbid, but it is just the way my mind works. i guess in a more normal timeline i would include the mileposts of their kids graduating from college, geting married and having their own kids, but my parents didn't make it that far, so my timeline is a little shorter than most. i guess seeing R get married just reminds me that most of my friends are approaching phase two, which leads to phase three and then- my ultimate fear- to phase four. my therapist has already helped me discover that the reason i put so much pressure on myself to adhere to a strict deadline (funny choice of words) with my own life achievements is because a part of me is convinced that i won't live longer than my parents did. so in my mind, time is literally running out, i've only got 16-29 years left. and even if i do make it further than they did, growing up just puts me that much closer to losing more of my loved ones, and i don't think i'm going to react so well to that.
which way is Neverland?
man, i need to lighten up. and being obsessed with CSI, a show about random and unusual deaths, is probably not a healthy choice right now. i need to get a more cheerful hobby. maybe i will revisit pottery.
on a happier note, J and i were both approved for health insurance by (my hero) Aetna. so that makes us a little less likely to die young, right? at least now i can make J go the hospital when my hypochondriac death paranoia kicks in.
and the wedding really was beautiful. and a lot of fun. R looked like a princess, the ceremony was short but emotional, the space was fantastic, the food was good, the music was great (my band, i might add, playing instrumental jazz- my boys did good!), and the whole thing went off without even one snafu (well, one of the bridal party members' leather coat caught on fire in the dressing room- burned a hole right through it- but that didn't really affect the day). i only hope for such smooth sailing on my own day. though i must say that being a MOH is hard- lots of work and not a cheap job either. i'm glad that R is now experienced in the difficulty of wedding planning; it should make her a supremely sympathetic and supportive MOH for me!
well, that's my depressing ramble for the day. now i must go write fiction- at least in fiction i actually CAN control death.
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