With this ring, I thee wed…

So marriage. I can’t say that I have spent too much time thinking about the institution. It’s always been there obviously, at the back of my mind, I am after all a good Indian girl and subject to the strings of the stereotype. Not too long ago however, I made up my mind never to get married. I had discovered much to my delight that I fell in and out of love every three months or so, and being perfectly content with the idea of doing it for the rest of my life I happily told the universe that love and marriage were not for me. I could not in all honesty imagine finding someone I could love forever, and so marriage seemed a rather stupid plan. And in view of all the horrible marriages I had seen erupt all over the place, it seemed like a stupid idea to even believe that you could love someone forever. I was saved from the terrifying trap that so many had fallen victim to, oh great joy!!

Right, so in this context, I have been rather solidly buggered. I have now been madly in love with the most unlikely man for seven months and counting, and instead of dying down, I appear to be showing rather alarming signs of falling even more in love with him. It’s terrible. There is nothing worse than being un-cynicised by life. You feel so profoundly stupid and generally childlike. I keep waiting for something to happen and for the rapidly diminishing cynic in me to jump up and say “AHA! I was right after all!”

Which brings us back to the original point of marriage. Once the subject was broached and I got over the initial barf reflex, I have discovered much to my surprise that not only do I want to get married, I have ideas about it. About what I’m going to wear and who I will invite and what is going to be served at which ceremony. Oh yes that’s right, I apparently want ceremonies. In plural. Where did I develop these horrible thoughts from? I have no recollection of ever consciously thinking about it. When did my traitorous girly mind form these plans, and how did it do so without telling ME?

Marriage, the life and not the day, isn’t terribly unappealing either, though that’s possibly because I am already living like I’m married to this man. I wash his underwear and he takes days off from work to look after me when I’m sick. It’s wonderfully comforting, and I wonder if could go back to my hit and run love affairs. It seems the guy who devised this whole ‘couple’ idea knew what he was doing. I recommend true love and mushiness to everyone! Go out and find someone you can cuddle and will respond when you refer to them as ‘Snugglybuns’ and Pookiepoo’. It’s surprisingly fun.

Introspection

Ah, the smell of obsession.

Not sadly, the perfume, but the actual emotion. I am drowning in it today,its powerful fragrance complemented by hints of jealousy, insecurity and just a dribble of yearning. What is it about this man?

I light another cigarrette, gaze up at the darkening sky from the thriteenth floor of my glass tower. How is it possible, that I have so little faith in a man who has done nothing to undermine it.

THe kites that are my guardians scream above me, their claws outstretched as they race towards a demon that swirled above my head. They rip it to shreds and I watch chunks of fears rain down on the cars below. I breathe in. Not smoke but air. It must be me.

The breeze blows across my face and I realise I am asking too much of a man who has given me everything. Breathe in. I know how he feels, even if he doesnt say it all the time. Even if he doesnt look at me the way I think he should. I need to stop thinking.

The kite screams again and I feel lighter. I walk back inside amidst a shower of broken fears and a dying terror that I might still lose him. The kites will scream again tomorrow.

Madness

Can you love like you did at sixteen? Or even eighteen?

I remember watching an episode of Ally Mcbeal (yes i know, just let it go for now) where she talks about how as men grow older, past their teens and into real adulthood, they lose the ability to love passionately, and uninhibitedly. Everything they feel is more mature and tempered with reality and responsibility. I've nevr been sure about how accurate this theory is, but I do know from my own experiences, that I dont feel as all consumingly as I did when I was sixteen.

There are of course problems with feeling so intensely, but honestly, who doesnt want to be loved like that? Now, in my early twenties, Im madly in love with someone who is in his early thirties. I have a much better grasp on my own emotions, and I'm no longer as psychotic as I used to be. But, neither is he. And as he has had so much more practise at being in control, I cant help but feel a vague longing for the madness that I remember from the love of other men who were still in the middle of growing up.

More importantly, and certainly more distressingly, I feel incredibly left out when it comes to his youth. when he speaks to me of women he loved when he was eighteen, women who are still a part of his life, women who he is still very fond of, I see in him the madness that I know is missing from his feelings for me. I dont think he is in love with anyone else, and I know that the reasons his previous relationships didnt work out were solid, and he has no desire to be with anyone but me, But bloody hell I wish he could love me like he loved them.

Its like there was this whole other man, who I will never know, never get to enjoy, never get to hate and never be loved by, who exists in the past tense but continues to haunt the present. We are so fatally stable, so committed to each other at such a fundamental level that in some sense there is no excitement left between us. The madness I have had with men before him, both the insane joy and the insane grief have become duller, less extreme, pastel.

He appears to be beyond such frivolity, but I know I am not. I want him as the man he was before he became mine, and I want to feel in the bright colours I used to. I can find it somewhere else obviously, but in truth I want him. I want to hvae some part to play in who is going to become, to give him the memories of insanity that we both have with other people.

I want, to put it simply to be drowning in the madness once again.

Happy New Ears to you all!

So the eventful year of 2007 is over. What a strange, surprising, unpredictable and unusual 365 days it has been.

I shall at some point do a recap, but for now my apologies for irregularity, when the recap does emerge it will explain much.

Love and kisses to you all, I hope your new year is as full of giggles as possible without the involvement of muscular people and padded rooms.