Regurgitatations of the Mind

Red is getting married. She called me on Monday and told me she was getting married. Tuesday she turned 21. Wah? Apparently they celebrated her birthday on Saturday night and her boyfriend (lots of background info I really do not feel like getting into right now) proposed. She went a little nuts with joy and jumped up and down a little and said yes. Wedding’s in September. She wants me to be one of her bridesmaids. Fuck.

I suppose I am happy for her, goodness knows I delivered an Oscar-winning performance of overjoyed….joy…icity. But I can’t help thinking…. She’s 21. We went to school together for a semester before she decided college was not her thing. He’s not in college he works. She works. They are both 21-ish. Wah?

Ok. I must admit that I am rather frustrated. I just found out this past holiday that my schoolmate Hill is married. She’s in college in Boston and she went home for Christmas and Evie told me that she saw Hill and Hill is married.

I had a photo session today with one of the reporters in another class who is doing a feature on her dad who is some Army Sgt. She seemed cool enough, we talked on the way to and fro (got a ticket on the way fro….fun times) and somehow it came out that she is graduating in May and getting married a couple weeks later. She’s 24.

My friend Ru, not my best friend Ru but the other Ru. She is graduating this semester and going off to dental school. She and her long term boyfriend are talking about marriage. Also 24.

I spoke to my best friend Ru this morning after she and a guy from my past who is resurfacing and causing me to squirm just a little bit (that’ll have to be a story for another day kids.) woke me up at 5:30. She’s found someone she is thinking about making it serious with. No marriage talk there but nonetheless.

So I can’t help thinking about my own thoughts on marriage. I assert constantly how I am not ready for marriage and how I want to kick start my career first and get into my own before even considering marriage. I turn my nose up at people my age getting married already and tsk tsk inwardly. But truth be told…..marriage is something I seriously ponder about. All this talk I put out, is it really just a mask to hide my own insecurity about my fears of never getting to that point where I have the option?

I do not have a steady relationship. I have never in my life had one. I am turning 22 in a hot minute and I am feeling grossly unfulfilled. I know a relationship will not fulfill you, but I can’t help feeling just the slightest bit void in that department. It has been eating me up inside. I suppose that is why so much drama with D.C. and Bigg. Not because I want to marry them. I’d rather eat rocks with a fork. But because I have this vacuum.

All this talk of marriage all around me has not depressed me. It has made me aware of subconscious feelings and thoughts I try and bury. Honestly, I am torn. As much as I pine inwardly for a relationship, I am so cynical about them right now that I do not see the point. Being in between those two emotions is torturous. You want something so badly but at the same time you see it as useless and cause for even more woe.

22 is not old. But it’s not high school anymore. It’s not teenager anymore. To those older than me, I still have my life ahead of me. But t me, I am getting older. And there’s no stopping it. How do you deal with the realization that life is going by faster than you realize? I am 22 almost. What have I done with myself? Eight years is really not a long time at all. It flies by.

And what do you do when u are surrounded by guys who do not even have the inclination to seek anything truly meaningful with you? Where do you look for Mr. Sincerity and how do you find him? How do you force yourself to wait patiently for him to find you when you feel you have been waiting forever in vain? I do not want to wait in vain.

October changed my life if I have to be totally real with it. I became the person I had been living to not be. And I let myself be blindfolded and used. And the weird thing is, I am still there now. Being used for far less than I am worth. Being strung along is a gross understatement. Being dragged through the mud is more like it.

Clark. He’s such a good friend to me. I spoke with him this week. I had to. I told him, to some extent, how I was feeling. He’s someone I can say genuinely cares for me. It is such a lovely feeling, I wish it on everyone. He told me that there are so many guys who are dying to make me happy and dying to have me, all of me for me. Just for being me. That I am special. I know that everyone is supposed to have someone who thinks they are special. But that is different. He said D.C. did not care about me. I know that and I have heard it time and time again from the people I have told about D.C. But I think for the first time in a long while, I actually heard it. It did not fall on deaf ears.

Now where is all this coming from when I started off talking about marriage? Well, it seems to me it’s all relative. Commitment, marriage, dating, love. Belonging. It is a cycle I admit I do not understand and am frightened to death of. But it’s also a cycle I am inevitably tied into. And I have to find my place and my bearings and learn how to deal.

Being a bridesmaid might reinforce how lone I feel. But it’ll teach me how to deal. My life is not over or ending. But 22 is time to be a grown up and realize life for what it really is. What that is, I have no idea.