My
wedding is nine weeks away.
I'm not sure why this realization hit me so hard today. My fiancee and I have been planning this for well over five months now, and we are mere inches away from having everything complete. But, for some reason, sitting at my desk today, it became more tangible than it ever had been.
I'd been fortunate in that I haven't really had a hard-core case of the cold feet yet. I think that I'd only been subject to the pre-wedding jitters that everyone gets at this point in the game. Today was entirely different. Today, worries that I didn't even know existed in my head started crawling around and reeking havoc on everything I had thought about this wedding.
I wonder if the little things that she does that annoy me will build up over time. I worry about our intimacy deflating to a point beyond repair. I worry about one of us getting sick and passing away, leaving the other in a state of isolated despair. And of course, as must cross the mind of any person about to get married, I worry about fidelity, about the breaking of the commitment I'm about to announce to the entire world.
This is the single highest level of fear I've ever felt. I want everything to be okay, to be in my control, so I don't have to worry anymore. I don't want to afraid to love her every day for the rest of my life. I hate this sensation, and I can't get it out of my head no matter what I try.
The marriages that I have as ready examples do little to encourage a sense of hope. My parents had more than one shotgun at their wedding, and have been together for the last twenty-five years because they were too poor and too settled to change their lives so drastically. In fact, going back as many generations as I can recall, I cannot come up with a single marriage that was the result of two people loving each other, and wanting to share their lives for eternity. Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but my childhood is surrounded by poor examples of living the married, loving life. From what I remember of my childhood, I thought that a man got married when he was done living, and had given up hope of all else. That thought still horrifies me.
I don't want to be afraid to tell my fiancee that I love her so much that I don't want anything to come between us. I don't want to be afraid to go in front of everyone I hold dear and admit that I want to share every second of my life with this woman, no matter how many ways the world my try to make it otherwise. I don't want to sit at my desk at work and be terrorized by my own thoughts.
I love her. I want to be an example to people like me; marriages can be loving and careful and wonderful, and there is no reason to worry. I want to prove everything that I know is wrong, and that I can succeed where others have failed. I want my wedding to prove that when I say love, I mean that; when I say forever, I mean that. I will do whatever it takes to live up to every word that I say.
My wedding is in nine weeks. Today, it crossed the line from fantasy to reality. I'm scared. I'm hopeful. The universe makes my head hurt.