Perfectly Flawed
I was thinking about marriage today instead of, as with every other day, merely living it. If marriage is what I always thought it would be, I wouldn’t know because I don’t ever remember thinking about what it would be like or what, god willing, it wouldn’t be like.
I knew what it was like to live with someone. In fact, I moved in with my husband shortly after we began dating. What could marriage add that would make our relationship any different, besides that now we could file taxes together? It would be official, but nothing would really change.
And it didn’t. For a while, anyway. The only thing that was recognizably different to me was when I said in conversation, “my husband,” I felt weird. Really, really weird. I felt old. I felt how I’d felt when Jason proposed to me and I stared down at the rock on my finger - like I’d just pulled off the greatest trick in the world, but was now going to have to pay for it…for life! It’s like when someone really dumb cheats on a test and achieves a perfect score. It’s all good until the professor, thinking this student is some miraculous genius, sends him to some esteemed academy where he will surely fail. For, how long can one really keep up the illusion of being someone he is not?
Not long, it turns out. Which is why I had to do some major soul searching and, in the end, change my evil ways (enter wicked laugh here). Marriage, then, became meaningful and when I said, “my husband,” it finally felt real.
My marriage is screwy. It is excellent. It is everything I hate and love about relationships. I’m “on the hook” with everything I do, and sometimes that makes me crazy. Sometimes it’s relieving. I’m saved, more often than not, from myself - from that overwhelming ego and It’s my life! attitude. If I were eloquent and well-spoken, I could say it a whole lot better. But since I’m not, I’ll give you this:
Long ago when the exquisite celadon bowl
that was the mikado’s favorite cup got broken,
no one in Japan had the skill and courage
to mend it. So the pieces were taken back
to China with a plea to the emperor
that it be repaired. When the bowl returned,
it was held together with heavy iron staples.
The letter with it said they could not make it
more perfect. Which turned out to be true.- Linda Gregg, The Secrets of Poetry
