Letter to the Marrying Kind

It’s happening. I’ve come to the age of the marrying. It’s all around me, suddenly. Even you, my friend, you’ve become one of two, one half of a whole, the old lady. The cynical romantic in me can no longer ignore you, so shrink-wrapped in bliss you can’t even inhale without losing sight of the objective.

White as a ghost, you nearly are one, a ghost to what you used to want, more familiar with watching what you’d always wanted grow and grow and grow until it’s perched on the ring finger of your left hand, twinkling condescendingly in the white of my eyes, the very white that used to see you as an individual bit is now doomed to reduce you to the phantom wife who can’t talk for five minutes without mentioning her husband and flashing the rock to all the guys who make a beeline for a date with her next week. They may miss you, my friend, but our old haunts no longer recognize your face. I have to lead you underground, and even here you’re still plagued with thoughts of how glad you are to finally be out of the trenches and up in the clouds, a goddess to one man, and one man only.

You’re jumping the gun, racing so far ahead of me I can’t even remember who you used to be. You caught the bug, the infinite virus, proliferating, radiating, slapping me in the face affectionately, pressuring to match me up, diverting my attention, indulging my ego with ideals from a distant high society, daring me to take the same plunge, shaking my insides and seeing what tumbles out, broken pieces to a puzzle that may never be solved, perhaps it’s not meant to be solved but appreciated as an unsolved puzzle, imperfect, wandering, and free.

But how did you escape this freedom? Relationship frenzy. Pairing off, two by two. Joint. Commitment. Devotion. Souls intertwined. You have each other in common. Companions intoxicated by one another. A call to say I love you solidifying the cliché so much it ceases to be cliché and becomes real, like the love you make is no longer just sex, it never was. Can’t get enough. Soon it shall be sealed with a kiss. Comfort. Relief. Relax.

You don’t have to prove your passion. You don’t have to be anyone but yourself, the one he adores, because it’s all out there. He’s there. Not trying to hide. He denies all male gender folklore by just standing on your doorstep, waiting for you to let him in, time and time again until you never get tired of seeing him there, until he’s nestled in next to you. You listen. Open mind. You spill your guts. You bite your tongue, then realize you don’t have to anymore, your voice is a gift to his ears. Your smile toasts his very existence.

Say goodbye to all the other men in the world. It’s not a fond farewell. They weren’t good enough. Maybe you could have married another. Maybe you could have married all of them. They might have made you happy, happy being miserable, ultimately, miserable. Disarray averted. The chances, the multiple choices of life, the chess pieces, they change with every decision, eliminating potential harmonies and melodies from colliding.

But you say you’ve met your match, and I believe you because you have faith. It may fade, it may die, but right now it’s ever-present, ready to start down a new path, create potential success and failure, for better, for worse. They say there’s somebody for everybody. He’s The One. He’s your soul mate. After the better half makes you whole, what’s next? There’s nothing left to show but emptiness, the only kind of emptiness that indicates there is no longer a void to fill. Satisfaction. Orgasmic. Still. Enduring. Breathe in, breathe out. Look beside you. He’s still there, making sure you’re still breathing, alive, because if you stopped he’d stop. If you stopped being yourself, falling in love with him, his heart would stop, with nowhere to go but rewind. You remind him of the man he needs to be.

So celebrate the potential for life flowing through you. Make sure your spirit is still free within the confines of his embrace. Just don’t be surprised to find me waiting in the wings, shining down on you in my single glory, smiling knowingly, slightly lonely but reveling, independent, pacing nervously in the trenches in front of oncoming traffic, looking up slyly ever so often at the cars speeding by, oblivious to their power but in absolute awe of the potential mysteries revealed once one hits me, head on. It’s happened before. It will happen again.

And when it does I shall finish this letter to you, seal it with a fleeting regret for my present grey mood and a doting appreciation for the future inevitability of falling in love, once again. I’ll send this letter someday. It’ll land in the mailbox that you and your husband share, maybe when you’re just back from the honeymoon, maybe when you just got back from visiting your first grandchild. But I’ll send this letter someday, my dear friend. And when you receive it you’ll know that I wish you all the happiness in the world.