feelings: they're gross.

I hate talking about feelings. I was raised in a home of stoics, where we were embraced only by the ends of 10 foot poles. Okay, I exaggerate, but really, we didn't talk about feelings. We were practical people with practical agendas and the only feelings we discussed were the ones that got in the way of the practicality of our decisions.

So if you're the kind of person I am, who really isn't into feelings, feel free to navigate away right now. Because feelings are kinda gross, always cheesey and often boring.

Matron of Honor has passed along a book called The Conscious Bride, and it's all about the negative nasty little feelings brides have when planning a wedding and what they're about and where they come from. I'm about halfway through (it's a quick read), and in an attempt to be the conscious bride of the title, I'm giving the input a think.

First of all, I should clarify that I do in fact have feelings, but I still tend to put them in the context of practicality. For example, I love my beau dearly, because it would be impractical to marry him otherwise. But I'm not really the kind of person to wax poetic about his virtues because I don't really think anyone cares, and also, I assume that anyone who's marrying anyone else loves them very much and would expect that outside viewers of our relationship would assume the same. I don't really have anything to prove, you see.

On Mommy Issues

So there are a few aspects of getting hitched that supposedly get brides down. One is the full separation from her parents, and I gotta say, I think I have that one down. I left my family home at 17, came back for a summer, and that was the end of that. But the real severance came when I had my little meltdown at 20 where I dropped out of school and became the loser my parents were so worried I would become. Effectively, I paid a therapist to justify my first-ever decision to go against my parents' wishes and I'll tell ya, it was a sound investment. Then I finished school and became a white-collar douchebag, so it all worked out.

Also, my mother is a much better Adult Mom than Kid Mom. I think I turned out pretty well, so I can't really fault her in her Kid Mom role, but she's way more maternal toward me as an adult than she ever was when I was a kid, and it's actually been really awesome. My mom is the person I call when I encounter some kind of social dilemma that needs addressing. When I was a child, I wouldn't dare share emotions with her because, well, she usually just dismissed it. She had two other kisd to worry about, and work, and feeding us. I see my relationship with my mom resolving itself as I get older, and we have met in the middle on having a husband, planning a wedding, dealing with family and (eventually) having kids.

As some of you noted in the last entry, she is totally awesome at knowing how to handle things.

In other words I've already worked through this part of it. Ditto for Daddy issues (I don't really have any, we're not terribly close, but not uncomfortably distant, I kinda do my own thing and he's always supportive).

On Losing One's "Singlehood"

You know, I haven't been single for longer than a week or two since I was a teenager. I've been the serial monogamist, wholly dedicated to whomever I was dating, until such time as the relationship disintegrated and I moved onto the next commitment. My "singlehood" has never really existed, but I'm independent and at peace with it.


The rest of it

I'm still only halfway through the book, and maybe I'm in denial about all these things I think I have sorted in my mind, but I definitely have this weird blah feeling toward it all, even though I'm very sure I've found the right guy and it's the right time, and this is the right decision. So I've been taking time to myself, doing some soul-searching and generally taking it easy. I'm hoping to just ride it out and that one day I'll wake up and either have an "Ah HA!" moment or just suddenly everything's a little brighter. The latter has certainly happened before, so it really wouldn't surprise me in the least.

And those are my feelings. If you read it all, I hope it wasn't too boring. =)