Getting Married (23 page)

Every word he says makes a lightbulb go off in my head, that undeniable PING! of recognition that
that makes sense
.

After Tad talks about what we need to make a change, the rest of us talk about what we think the hardest of these steps might be and how we can overcome the challenges we’re going to face. One of the women, whose name I learn is Robbie, short for Roberta, also used crystal meth. She is a very attractive, fit woman with curly hair and bright eyes, so when she says that she used to save and dry out her urine so she could resmoke the meth, it’s too shocking for me to even begin to believe.
How could this cute woman be so desperate as to do something so vile? Could that happen to me?

“So, Eva,” Tad says when the class is wrapping up. “This was your first time with us. What do you think?”

“I think I learned a lot. I’m glad I came.”

“We’re not scary people who live under bridges,” Robbie says.

“No. That’s the scariest part,” I say.

A
s time passes, I still have cravings, but they aren’t nearly as intense as they were in the beginning. When they come, I just wait them out. Once I do it a few times, I realize it’s possible, and that makes it easier to do it again. That’s what I have learned: Change isn’t easy, but it is
possible
.

In one of our daily phone calls, I tell Mom about the eight-week class and how much I like the people and how much I think it’s helping me. “It’s a lot cheaper than therapy and it addresses the real issues,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean my big problem is my behavior today. Anne keeps wanting to focus on things that happened to me in my childhood. I’m not opposed to exploring my past to figure out why I’m behaving like I am today, but I think the more immediate problem is dealing with the behavior first and then worry about the rest of it. In fact, I’m getting so frustrated with Anne that I’m thinking about not seeing her anymore. I just don’t think our philosophies sync up. I mean nothing really bad ever happened to me as a kid. So my dad was emotionally distant and had high, unrealistic expectations for me. Boo-hoo, poor me. This therapy thing just seems so self-indulgent.”

“No Eva, getting help for your problems isn’t self-indulgent. Using drugs is.”

I freeze. This hurts because it’s true and she’s absolutely right.

“Look Eva, you may not have been molested or abused as a child, but somewhere along the way you learned to believe that you weren’t worth loving. But even if you can’t remember that you’re worth loving, you have to think about how much I love you and how much your sister loves you and how much Will loves you. We can’t bear to see you hurt.”

The thing is, as much as I struggle to believe in my own inherent self-worth, she’s right. I know without a doubt how very much these people love me and how much I love them.

I
ncreasingly, the idea of marrying Will doesn’t fill me with joy but with fear. I’m not having full-blown anxiety attacks, but I feel edgy about the prospect of getting married. And I feel guilty for feeling this way. I feel guilty for feeling doubt. I feel guilty about having stopped planning the wedding, when Will has no idea I’m thinking any of this. One of the things I’m learning in therapy is how to communicate better, and I think that in some ways, I’m improving. Like take last night, for example: Way back when I started planning the wedding, I asked Will to write up a guest list so I could know how many people to invite. His list included forty-one “definites,” thirteen “maybes,” and sixteen “maybe, but probably nots.” Putting my list of fifty definites with his list, I start working with the number seventy-five, since I know not everyone will be able to make it. At the time, I didn’t even look at his list, I just wanted the number for planning purposes. I told him to get everyone’s name and address to me electronically so I could mail them an invitation, but that there was no rush, because I wouldn’t be mailing the invites out until two months before the wedding. Just the other day, out of nowhere, Will said he’d gotten everyone’s name and address together on a disk, and he handed me a hard copy of all the names. On his “definite” list, ninth from the top, was his ex-wife. When I saw her name, my heart began thrashing around in my chest. I thanked him, put the list down on the table, and went into the bathroom and took several deep breaths. All the nights of sleep I’d lost over this woman, and he wanted to invite her to our wedding. A woman who was well-known for being a party animal, whose drunken antics were legend, and he wanted to invite her to our wedding. A woman who he once vowed to spend his life with, and he wanted to invite her to our wedding.

As I breathed in and out, trying to keep my anxiety in check, I wondered if I was being unreasonable. After all, he and X were still friends. They rarely see each other, but they speak on the phone and email every now and then.
That
doesn’t bother me, because I have that exact same friendship with my ex, Rick. But to invite her to the wedding…

I took one last deep breath, exited the bathroom, and walked into the living room, where Will was sitting on the couch, watching TV.

I took the remote and hit M
UTE
. Will looked at me. “What’s up?” he said.

“Will, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why did you put your ex-wife on our guest list?”

“Because I know that if she had a wedding, she would invite me. We’re friends.”

He didn’t have to say that she had been a huge part of his adult life. He met her when he was twenty-four, married her at twenty-eight, and stayed friends with her even after divorcing her when he was thirty-two. I know she’s been a huge part of his life, and that’s exactly what rips my heart out. “Will, I feel very strongly that I don’t want her at our wedding.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” That was it? No argument? No protests? No, “you’re being an idiot”?

“It’s your wedding.”

“It’s our wedding.”

“She’ll understand not getting invited. I don’t want you to worry about her being there. I don’t want you to worry about anything. I just want to marry you.”

“Thanks, Will.”

And that was it. It doesn’t sound like much, but I had a strong emotion, I expressed it to Will after only a mild, low-grade anxiety attack, and voila, problem solved, concern addressed. Look how great this communication stuff is!

But how am I supposed to tell Will I’m having doubts about getting married? I’m hoping it’s just a run-of-the-mill case of cold feet, but whatever it is doesn’t change the fact that we’re not going to have a wedding to go to if I don’t get my ass in gear and finish planning the thing.

I
talk to my therapist, Anne, about my fears.

“It’s very common to be anxious before a wedding. Marriage is a huge deal,” Anne says.

“I know. Of course I know that. I just—I’m feeling very unsure. I’m not sure I want to marry Will. I want to be with him forever, it’s not him I don’t want, it’s marriage. It’s so scary. I’ve heard so many people say how love can die. What if that happens to Will and me?”

“There are no guarantees, Eva.”

“At first I was dying to get married to him, but now I feel too scared. Will was married once before, did I tell you that?”

“You mentioned that he had an ex-wife.”

“I can’t stand that he was married before. I’ve never been a jealous person before, but when I think of his ex-wife, oh, it just kills me. She was a former stripper and a total party animal. I worry that because I’m not like that, I’m somehow a disappointment to Will.”

“Your jealousy is an expression of your insecurity.”

“I know.”

“As we work together to improve your self-esteem you’ll stop worrying about how you measure up to other people. You’ll start thinking about how lucky Will is to have you instead of how you’re not perfect. Why don’t you tell me why Will is lucky to have you?”

I think about how I’ve been considering calling off the wedding. It will break Will’s heart. So is Will lucky to have me, a woman who is incapable of making major life decisions without being thrown into a crippling panic? I don’t think so.

“I make a good living,” I say. “I’m good at my job. I’m well read and well educated. I can be funny. I’m pretty smart.”

“I’d say Will is a lucky man indeed. You just keep reminding yourself until thinking well of yourself becomes second nature.”

T
he guilt about the wedding is going to do me in. Ridiculously, I try to get myself to think of the wedding as a test I have to study for like the SAT. I was always a good test-taker. I just need to buckle down and study, or, in this case, plan.

As a little girl, I remember distinctly having paper dolls with wedding dresses I could dress them in. I loved those paper dolls and I played with them until their clothes were ripped and crinkled into oblivion. I was a flower girl in three weddings, and I always thought there was something so wonderful about the flowers and pretty dresses and cakes and elaborate meals. Why can’t I resurrect some of the wonder about weddings that I had as a little girl? Certainly the meaning of the event is heavy with import, but somehow, when I look through the wedding magazines and books, I don’t get a sense of wonder or a feeling of magic. Instead I feel tired and more than a little annoyed with forking over so much cash for an event that’s only going to last a few hours. Maybe it would have been easier if I’d gotten married at twenty-two and just stuck Dad with the bill after all. I can’t stop thinking of other ways Will and I could spend this money. Maybe we could go on a three-week trip to Hawaii instead of the nine days we were planning on or maybe we could go on a trip through Greece or the British Isles or an extended cruise through the Caribbean. Should I be worried that I’m more excited about the honeymoon than the actual wedding itself?

Every day I sit down with the stacks of books and magazines I bought and will myself to forge ahead with making phone calls and ironing out details, but just thinking about it makes my heart tight with worry and my thinking fuzzy.

Maybe the problem is that I’ve never been good at “girly” stuff. I couldn’t sew a curtain to save my life. I can barely toss a throw pillow.

That night, I have a dream that I’m walking down the aisle, and I step on the back of my bridal gown and the entire back end of my dress comes off. I’m not wearing any underwear or even nylons, and my fat ass is on display for all to see, except somehow I don’t know this. I say my vows all teary-eyed and emotional, while the audience snickers in hilarity behind me. I wake up breathless. I look around. Will is sleeping. A glance at the red lights on the digital clock reveals it’s 3:34 in the morning. It was just a dream. Just a dream. Okay.

After a couple minutes, my breathing returns to normal. I close my eyes and drift in and out of sleep. I have another dream. In this one, Will and I are in a big house at a party with a bunch of people I don’t know. We’re at the party for quite awhile. It’s a large house, and we endlessly go from one room to the next as people talk and mingle all around us. When the end of the night comes, Will tells me he has to go back to Michigan where he really lives. He cares for me, but he has to leave me. I wake up again, anxious and upset, and again, it takes me a minute to register that it’s just a dream. I actually have to sit there and think for a moment about whether Will is really from Michigan. Of course he’s not. He’s never been to Michigan in his life. He grew up right here in Colorado. He’s not leaving me. This hasn’t all been a giant fling. I close my eyes and my body and mind linger in a nebulous netherworld that’s not quite sleep. I have a third dream. In it, I learn that Will is a serial murderer. The cops have been searching for months for the person who committed a series of brutal murders, and I stumble upon the clues that lead me closer and closer to the truth. Just when I learn the murderer is my fiancé, he attacks me. Again I wake up, my heart pounding, my breath jagged. It’s 5:52 in the morning, and I’ve had a terrible night of sleep. My eyes sting from the lack of rest.

I can’t do this. I can’t get married. It’s going to be the end of me.

My thrashing and out-of-control breathing has woken Will. “What’s up?” he says groggily, his eyes only half open and straining to focus.

“I haven’t been able to sleep all night. I’ve been having bad dreams.”

“I’m sorry, hon.”

“I think we have to talk.”

“What about?”

“Will, I love you, but I’m not sure I have what it takes to be married. I thought marriage was what I wanted, but now I don’t think it is.”

“Eva, you just had a bad dream.”

“No. It’s more than that. I haven’t done anything with the wedding. Not since that night I spent in the hospital.”

“You’ve just been under too much stress. Let’s just elope.”

“It’s not the wedding I don’t want. I just don’t want to be married. I’ve thought about this a lot.”

Tears well up in his eyes. I’ve never seen him cry before. You’re going to think I’m awful, but I’m actually touched—happy even—by the sight. I think,
this man really loves me
. I think I knew that before, but in a logical, cerebral way. His tears make me understand his commitment to me in a more real, emotional way, some place deep in the core of my soul.

“Will, I think I’ve stopped planning the wedding because deep down I have too many conflicted feelings about being married. I think the truth is that I don’t want to be married. I mean, if I wanted kids, I would definitely want to be married for legal reasons, but I don’t want kids, so I don’t see the point.”

“I’ll tell you what the point is,” Will says. “The point is that I want to make a commitment to you and I want you to make a commitment to me and I want to do it in front of everyone we love and care about. I want to let the world know that there is no one in the world I would rather be with. No one.”

“But you thought that when you married…Elizabeth,” I get her name out, her real name out, stumbling over it only a little. “You know better than anyone how you can enter a marriage believing it will last forever only to end up divorced a few years later.”

“I got married when I was twenty-eight years old. I was young. I know much better now what marriage means, and what you need to do to make a marriage succeed. You and I have both been in love before, but what we have together you and I, it isn’t the young, naïve love we’ve had with other people. We’re older and wiser and we know what marriage and commitment really mean. I don’t think things will always be easy in our lives, but I believe that if we’re together, we could be happy most of the time. And when we do go through hard times, I want to get through them together.”

“I’m sorry, Will,” I say, slipping the beautiful antique platinum engagement ring off my finger. “I want to be with you, but I don’t want to be married to you.”