Dan may be the most unromantic man on the planet. He proposed while I was washing the dishes wearing just a giant T-shirt in the morning, still tasting my morning breath with messy, just woke up hair. He got on his knees and hugged the back of my legs while I continued scrubbing. “Marry me.” “Shut the F up,” I may be the most unromantic woman on the planet. I was uncomfortable with his face so near my bum, like I said, no pants or anything besides the T-shirt. Dan and I had already been living together for 5 years, and it had been a bumpy ride. We remained loyal to one another, and we were great friends. We also did “it” all the time, which helps a relationship stay solid, and keeps the psyches intertwined. We may not have been romantic, but we were both monogamous semi-happy pervs. “Where’s the ring?” I didn’t really care about a ring, a symbolic gesture, even made out of a twist tie would have sufficed. “Uh...” yeah, that’s what I thought. I didn’t really take his weird proposal seriously until we had a discussion later. “Do you really want to get married?” He did. I wasn’t totally against it, though it seemed unnecessary. I was spiritual, not religious. I didn’t believe the Great Spirit required a piece of paper from the government or from a self-appointed holy representative to make our relationship legitimate. I was completely satisfied with the security of our union, our depth of compatibility, and our healthy partnership. James was a little guy, then. He had started school early, in preschool, and it would help with paperwork and healthcare and other not fun legal logistics if we had the same last name. I was ready to face a fear, and bound myself for life to the stable family that I had longed for my entire life. I wasn’t just marrying Dan, but joining a ready made family. I had a predisposed belief that marriages were doomed to fail because I watched my parents horrid excuse for a marriage disintegrate. As they neglected me and one another for their own pursuits of happiness or misery depending on the parent, I was left to fend for myself. They divorced when I was 15 years old and it was a relief. I was so happy the fighting and drama would end, it didn’t. I knew they’d be better off apart, though they do still love one another in their own weird way (my dad moved next door. It’s been 28 years, seriously). My mom had a bit of a nervous breakdown and I took care of her for a few months before realizing I was enabling her to stay in a depressed and broken state. I moved out at age 15 into a trailer on my Uncle Mark’s property. I pretty much ran away. I moved to Southern California when I turned 16 with my 21 year old boyfriend and managed to graduate high school with a 3.8 grade point average. I moved back to the hills after about 6 months because Van Nuys wasn’t my cup of tea, though Venice Beach, Griffith Park and the Self Realization Meditation center made it not so nasty. My mom pulled herself together, became employed and turned her bipolar emotional hurricane inward. She became addicted to buying random things. There isn’t ten square feet of space in her entire 5000 square foot home that isn’t filled with a knick knack or some never used brand new boxed item. I watch “Hoarders” to learn how to speak with her without getting into a fight. I should have become a psychiatrist. Most every one of my aunts and uncles divorced. Even my own grandmother, my father’s mother, divorced my grandfather in rural Iowa back in the day when people stayed in unhappy marriages. I didn’t have a good example of what love was supposed to look like or what love even was. The relatives that stayed together were even worse than the ones that divorced. They were milking mental illness or harboring pedophiles. I worked as a photographer while putting myself through college, and I loved shooting weddings. I kept in touch with most of my clients over the years and now half of them have divorced. Fifty percent of the marriages I photographed ended within ten years. It actually made me so unhappy I wasn’t able to magically fix them by capturing their love on film. After leaving a shattered 6-year attempt at a relationship that felt and looked just like my parent’s explosive union, Dan and I decided to escalate our friendship to something more. At first I didn’t really like him in a dating kind of way, but I already loved and respected him as a person for years. He convinced me to let him try and I actually fell in real love for the first time. Real love entails compromise, time, space, respect and honor. It’s very hard to create real love. Because of financial and prior obligatory arrangements we were forced to move in together much too soon. It didn’t help the relationship but we worked through it. Dan allowed me to heal and work on myself, so that I could love him from a healthy mind and body. I experienced too many traumatic experiences within a short time to be anything but loaded with unhealthy mental baggage. Right before Dan and I started hanging out I had just lost a best friend. He was one of the true loves of my life, and he succumbed to his depression and went out in a blaze of glory but not really, a violent gunshot through his skull, just missing mine by a few inches. When Paul died I was just starting to deal with the betrayal and emotional injury of my prior 6-year live in relationship. Paul was my shoulder, as I had been dumped for 18 year old girls, and meth. Another friend from high school also dumped me, a girl I lived with right after high school that I truly loved and believed she would be a friend for life. She told me I was too much drama. She was right, I had been cast away, like trash, by my ex, right before my other friend died in my arms. I lost 3 people I thought I would spend the rest of my life with, in the span of a few months. I couldn’t pinpoint what I was doing wrong, but in retrospect maybe I was choosing a path I already knew; depression, addiction, pain and suffering. There was also an alcohol drenched rape by a very popular drummer my freshman year in high school. I have 90+ mutual friends with my rapist on Facebook (see my art piece titled “You are Friends with a Rapist” for more details and my best poetry to date). If you are reading this and we went to high school together you probably are friends with my rapist. I had only disclosed the rape to a few very close friends, and most of them were there that night. Part of healing is being open and honest. I am just beginning to understand that it wasn’t my fault, no matter how drunk I was. I was passed out. I despised this friend of my best friend's boyfriend. I had even successfully fought him off of me when I was sober in an earlier attack at my house. This time I wasn't prepared to fight. I trusted everyone at the place I was staying, so I didn't even think twice before getting annihilated. Mass consumption of alcohol isn't a good idea, especially when some one brings a rapist to a party. Through generous helpings of LSD I tried to veil the pain within, but only truth can heal a body and mind. Better late than never. Dan gave me time and space and everything I needed to be myself and to heal myself. He took care of the financial security of our family by working hard every day and giving James and me a place to call home. I was able to pursue my dreams of creating art, and teaching art, though it’s not the most financially stable business in a small town, especially when you add family obligations. Dan was loyal to me, made me laugh all the time, and cherished our love and friendship. He gave me the one thing I always wanted, which was stability, a home, and a happy family. I didn’t need a white picket fence, the ghetto would do. We turned our backyard into our own little farm. I trusted Dan so I decided if he wanted to get married I would suck it up and just do it. What could go wrong? From my prior experience the question actually should be what couldn’t go wrong? Right away my mother started fighting me. I wanted a night wedding. “No, that bad luck, Ann.” I wanted candles. “No, you can’t have fire, too danger.” She has a heavy Thai accent, I like to imitate it to amuse my friends. I wanted to do a ceremony at the river under a full moon. “No, lake better.” Every single thing I mentioned was shot down immediately. I didn’t want to get married anymore. I finally spoke up. “It’s not your wedding, it’s my wedding!” My mother screamed at me on the phone. “I never got a wedding in Thailand with your dad!” I was going to give up, I told Dan it wasn’t worth it. Dan is a smart guy, with a persistent nature. “Just do it your way, don’t worry about your mom.” I sent out 50 wedding rehearsal invitations for a full moon ceremony under the full moon at the river. Only about 30 people showed up. They thought it was a rehearsal. I had my friend, Gayla, ordained and got cabins and rooms in Nevada City, at the Trolley Junction. It was perfect. Dan teased me, when I was planning,“Where’s the goat head?” I made the whole thing up, not realizing that some of the ceremony was actually established old traditional lore of my Scandinavian ancestors. There must have been some cell memory that was firing deep within. It worked, I loved my wedding, except for the fact they tapped the keg too early. That’s another entirely not so cool story. Once married, I did feel different. I couldn’t easily run away. I started running away at age 3 or 4. I would pack a clean sock full of Flintstone vitamins and figured I could live off one a day. I usually took about 18. I didn’t know what I planned to do after they were all gone. All I knew was that I was leaving. I would kick out the screen on the window and easily climb down the air conditioning unit once outside. I did it all the time. One of my aunts always teased me, “Remember when you were running away? You were so little.” I don’t remember when I wasn’t running away. Even when I was in my six year pre-Dan relationship we moved all the time, I can’t really remember why. My ex and I moved 10 times in 6 years. It taught me not get attached to “stuff.” I just randomly tossed things in boxes and threw away anything that didn’t survive the ride. Once Dan and I lived in the same place for 5 years straight I felt like I had won the lottery. Even though we were living in a crappy house that had been trashed by his family for decades before we were even born, we had a house that we could repair together. I was a total fixer up, I knew how the house felt. Dan thinks he scored, but I knew the truth. He’s such an old fashioned man, I tease him all the time. He should have been born in 1802 and been a farmer in the dust bowl. Dan and I basically eloped with about 30 witnesses. I just gave my camera to an artistic friend and he shot our photographs. Another awesome chef friend cooked and made scrumptious food for just the cost. Other friends did my make up and hair, chipped in, bought and arranged the flowers including my bouquet. Dan and I purchased the license, a crap ton of beer, the food and some cabins. People will brag about how much they spent on their weddings, I brag about how inexpensive my wedding was. It’s just a party. It’s funny how we’re taught the opposite of that our whole lives as women. Weddings are shoved down our throats since birth, it's supposed to be a fantasy and crucial to our well being. I have a rebellious soul and didn't swallow the consumerism. The relationship is more important. Better to spend the money on bills or a vacation. That is true romance. Once Dan and I were married, we did get rings. They were simple, white gold bands. It was still a secret to my family, but we were wearing them. Out at dinner with my mom about a month later, Dan accidentally slipped and called me his wife. My mother’s eagle eye had already caught the rings and she asked me directly if we already got married. She was in the midst of planning a $10,000 Thai wedding extravaganza with Thai monks imported from San Francisco. There were not enough at our Sacramento Buddhist Watt, only 5 lived there. We needed nine monks to be extra lucky. I told her honestly that we had gone to the river and Gayla married us. She scoffed, said it wasn’t real, because she didn’t do it, so her wedding planning continued. It was nice to see her so happy. I thought it would be interesting for my relatives on my father’s side to see a traditional Thai wedding but that was before I knew what it actually entailed. I should have done a little research first because if you think Catholicism is a serious religion, times that by three. I refer to the Thai wedding as the 8-hour torture session. I held my tongue and smiled and waved like the best puppet daughter in the universe. I deserve an academy award for that performance. I bowed, and kneeled so many times and for so long my legs were numb. My maid of honor’s ankles actually bled from the kneeling. Extra blood more blessing? Dan’s best man almost passed out and did throw up from the heat. The long and laborious ceremonial duties continued from dawn to dusk and smart people were already partying. The Iowans were pleased. There was enough Thai food for a couple hundred people which was about how many guests there were. My mom was in charge of the guest list. I feel like an asshole because she forgot to invite some of my favorite cousins in Iowa, yet there were a ton of people Dan and I had never met. We did get personally blessed by all the monks we could round up and individually by every guest who wanted to bless us in addition to dancing performances specially designed for our day. The magic must have worked. We’re still together, and we’re relatively happy after almost 18 years. We’re still in the same house, and the love actually grew stronger and better. Sometimes I think it was the torture fest that really sealed the deal, but other times I think Dan and I are just awesome. Wedding Under the Full Moon Thai Torture Fest
2 Comments
Sharon
6/5/2017 08:45:46 am
That was beautiful!
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Scott Greenhaw
6/5/2017 09:30:06 pm
Very enlightening Anita and brave to reveal yourself. I'm proud you've overcome so much and happy you found your HOME.
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