I rode home from a wedding in a cramped car last night, my body stretched across the back seat, across the laps of my best friend, my favorite gay man, and my ex. My head banged against the window every few seconds, but I was still drunk enough not to care. Today, I have a sizable bruise, kind of a goose egg and quite painful.Weddings always make me aggressive, which I hate. I want to celebrate joy in the lives of people I love, but somehow that's just not possible for me. I have a hundred different theories as to why, but today the most compelling is that weddings represent how irrelevant I've become to whomever's getting married. The ceremony is a very real moment after which there is no doubt that I'm not the most important person in these people's lives... I'm not even in the top five. (Clearly I struggle with narscicism.) That thought gets me to thinking about the un-married people in my life and I realize I'm not that important to them either.
At a certain point, as a single person in her mid-20s, I come up against the changing nature of all my friendships. I'm not that important to anyone and no one is that important to me. This is not to say I don't value relationships, but I'm not in daily contact with anyone these days (anyone who's not a cat). Things just aren't what they used to be, like back in those four glorious years known as college.
I had a very meaningful conversation with my friend T(2) several months ago... we were talking about art and making art and how none of it is effortless. I wondered how he'd been able to survive as an artist against all odds, and he told me having a partner was probably the most significant factor. Well, shit. I guess that just gives me another reason to hate married people.
P.S. It must be said that the wedding itself was amazing/beautiful/fun-filled; the bride was stunning, the food was quite tasty, and the booze was free.
