kethrai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Second-Best Dress--The RantyPants Entry: Smackdown! “What gets under your skin? I mean, really gets under there?” –part of the Three Way Action challenge. I’ve been to two weddings in the last few weeks. One as attendee, one as officiant. (Yes, you read that right. I am officially the Right Reverend Kethrai, courtesy of the www.ulc.org , and I can legally marry and bury in all fifty states of the union. Getting hitched? Want a non-denominational minister who will listen to you, cheerfully use your vows (unless they involve gerbils—that just squicks me out--) and in general, lets you have your wedding your way? I should print up cards-- Will Marry For Food and Plane Tix—except that doesn’t sound quite right. Okay, shameless plug over.) And both weddings rather bothered me, for rather different reasons, but they boil down to the same thing. A word that I truly despise. Something that makes me grit my teeth every time I hear it, see it, or am forced to endure listening to someone burbling about it. Soul-mate. I know, I know. What could be wrong with that, you’re thinking? It’s a sweet notion. It’s cute, even. How can she object to soul mate, especially as she’s married already? Soul mate is a poisonous notion, as far as I’m concerned. It implies that in all the whole world, only one person is right for you, and if you don’t find them, then everyone else you have a relationship with is the default, the second choice, what you make do with when you can’t have the Real Thing. The Evil Ex once was speculating while in bed with me as to when he would meet his perfect woman, his soulmate. Well, gosh. Way to make a person feel like chopped liver. Good enough to fuck, not good enough to keep, much? Since then, I’ve gritted my teeth through several relationships, mine and others, while people told me about the “one who got away”, the Perfect One, the Soulmate, who just is beyond compare, and meanwhile they are making do with their whitebread boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife or domestic partner, because while they are not up to the standard of the Unattainable, they will cook and clean and screw. Or the variation of “If I fixed myself up, I would be worthy of the Unattainable, but since I’m not worthy, I’ll make do with this skanky POS.” The reductionist thinking alone is enough to make me froth, but the sheer unkindness and the lack of generosity and the spirit of hospitality makes me hot enough to fry catfish on. One (amongst the many) reason that I chopped off my long girlblonde hair ten years ago, and dyed it red and kept it red, was because on two separate occasions (I suppose on the theory that all Blonde Girls Are The Same) I was chosen for my physical resemblance to the Unattainable-She-Who-Came-Before. Of course, all the complaints about me that inevitably followed were the points on which I differed from the Soul Mate Who Got Away—too tall, too fat, not quiet enough, fill in the blank. Any point in which I differed from the Goddess was something that was Wrong With Me. Hell yes, I’m bitter. I’ve ranted a bit before about my sister in law’s wedding. What I found frightening about their vows were how milquetoast they were, all about self-actualization and marrying your best friend. But they also used that poison word—soulmate. I don’t consider my sister in law to be in possession of a soul, to start with—I think she makes do with a Macy’s charge card—and the smug assumption that she had met her soulmate—because, of course, she’s Perfect, and Who Else Would She Marry?-- sets my teeth on edge. I feel sorry for the Poor Suffering Bastard she married—he’ll probably figure out that she was really after his American Express Gold Card in ten years or so, after she has him safely ensnared with several pregnancies—but he truly is a nice guy. And when the baby concert-quality grand falls from the sky on him, he won’t even be able to find the E key to Escape with. Her affirmation that he is her Soul-mate is the worst kind of lie. The second wedding was Sunday night, after we chased the last of the patrons out of the last day of the faire. Two of our friends wanted to get married at the faire—they’re slated for the Big Family Production Wedding next year, and wanted the “real” marriage –the one that would mean something to them, personally, surrounded with their friends—to happen under the night sky in the pine woods, with the Darling Husband and I co-officiating in a very pagan handfasting wedding ceremony. While I sympathized with their intentions, in practice there were (as there always are) a number of complications. There were a number –a VAST number—of not-so-small inconveniences having to do with staging this wedding, with most of the inconveniences being somehow shuffled off onto the Darling Husband and I. I admit, I’m more than a little touchy about certain interpersonal relationships, and I was well aware that this young couple is MUCH closer to the Darling Husband than to me, asked him to officiate, and then included me as a kind afterthought. I'm overtired and touchy. Sue me. And the damnded word came up again. Soulmate. What the fuck. I think our young friends have a good chance of making their marriage work, and all, but all I can picture is sometime 10 years down the road, long after they've broken up, using the mythical Chosen One to torment their current partner with. I probably am bitter because I have never been anyone's soulmate. I tend to be the one who comes in second--not the best fit, but the second-best dress. I'm what you pick when what you wanted is gone....The person you don't want, but who can fulfil at least a need. I do like the notion of kindred spirits--people who you don't mind running up your phone bill for, who you yard sale with, who are kind and friendly and who are easy to be kind and friendly with. I know that because I am not the kind of woman that people fixate upon, it has made me tend to be more affectionate to those who might need it more--who, like me, are a little funny in the body and funny in the head; to have movie crushes on the unlikely or unhandsome hero; perhaps this is the kind of karma that is forcing me to be a better person than my naturally nasty nature would otherwise support. I am far too tall, too competent, too useful for anyone to step much out of their way to think that I might need something special --so much so, that when folks, particularly this year, HAVE stepped out of their way to help or to cheer me up, it's brought me close to tears. I'm not used to being a visible person. A visible persona, yes--years on stage and publication in multiple venues will often make you recognizable to the general public, but I don't really expect anyone to see me, particularly. I'm not the sort of person who gets soulmates, or even is the sort of person that anyone even thinks of helping out. I'm far too good at standing on my own two, already. Soul-mate. The intimate and rigid cage of expectations, that in the end even twists and cripples the original partner, and leaves marks of unfitness on everyone who follows after. The whip of disappointment, the flogging of the ones who are there for the sake of those who aren't. The manacles of expectation disappointed, and the clang of the bars on a cell of inadequacy. Soul-mate. Feh. 6:56 p.m. - 2002-08-20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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