Like Flies

Everyone is getting married.  No, really, everyone.  Between my significant other and myself, we have five weddings to attend this summer. And I know other couples who have attended as many as seven per season. Aside from the obvious financial implications of being subject to this much matrimony, there is a psychological side, which I find inescapable at the moment.

I can't help but obsess about what it means that all of them are getting married and we aren't.  What's wrong with us that we aren't taking the plunge? And then I think about actually taking the plunge and my stomach clenches like the fist of a baby who just wrapped his fingers around something he ain't letting go of.  It's scary shit.

I'm told this reaction is normal.  My mother talks about "surviving" her twenties - making it to her thirties without joining the marriage club.  Maybe this is what my skepticism about marriage has its roots in.  Hmmm...

Anyway, I'm caught. Caught between feeling the pressure of doing what everyone else is doing (because I'm 27 and clueless and if it works for so many of them, well, it might work for me, right?) and remembering that my life is A-OK just the way it is and I still have a lot of questions about marriage, and, that there's nothing WRONG with me for not going with the flow. I have to repeat this over and over again.  The pressure is just that strong.

This is the problem with having so many choices.  My generation really is the first to have literally limitless options of what to do with our lives.  And, for women, it's even more complicated.  I once read an article in Forbes (that one time that I read Forbes...probably in a Dr.'s office), that today's woman can do anything she wants, but not everything.  Sure, you can have a career and be a bad ass and make lots of money, but if you pursue that, the family thing might not be so easy by the time you have time to do it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm profoundly grateful to the generations of women who went before and worked tirelessly to get us to this more liberated, wholly confusing place.  But, I feel like I have to choose a path and hope it's the right one.  In years past, you knew what your path was and it was the right one, because it was the only one.

But, then I think, maybe choice is all just an illusion. I mean, if we all have a destiny then we'll end up doing exactly what we're supposed to, right?  That's not good enough for today's 20-something, though.  We're too inundated with messages saying, "succeed!", "make the most of your life!," "always strive to be the best!" "Be proactive!"  When did we become so obsessed coming in first place?  We should be glad to be out of the kitchen and feeling the sunshine on our faces.

So it begins with matrimony and, quickly, spirals out of control until I am calling into question every choice in my life, examining it under a microscope, as if looking at each individual atom is going to help me "know" if it's right. Yeah, I know, not so sane.

When I get like this I'm pretty useless. I obsess and fixate until nothing makes sense anymore.  Only when I reach that desperate point, do I remember to ask for help from The Great Spirit (or higher power, or God, or Allah or whatever you want to call him/her/it.) I ask it to help me move in the right direction, just focus on taking the next right action.

Holy poop.  I'm listening to music on Pandora right now and The Beatle's "Let it Be," just came on.  Wow...um, that's f*ing awesome. I'm a little freaked out, but also totally grateful.

So, as my girlfriends get married and continue "dropping like flies" as I selfishly like to think of it, I suppose I'll take John Lennon's advice and just let it be. I'm told there will be an answer...it's just a matter of time.