Trust me, no one is more shocked at that statement than I am. The groom, who was a re-mix of a few guys I've dated, did not have a big role in my dream and I didn't even realize I was getting married - I think it was an arranged marriage that my mother planned (which is odd, because my mom is pretty hands off when it comes to my decisions, regardless of how ridiculous she thinks I'm being). All I had to do was show up to the wedding. The twist? I was in a poetry contest the same day of the wedding, and I had to be there in order to participate. I could feel myself getting very stressed out during the dream (my sisters kept calling to see where the hell I was at), but the wedding was just going to have to wait because I kept advancing to the next round of the contest. While I felt some excitement about the wedding, getting married just wasn't as important as the poetry contest.
Paging Dr. Freud!
It isn't a big stretch to figure out what my dream was about. The contest represented my writing and what I want to do with it, and the wedding represented relationships and family expectations. The dream was an outlet for a realization that I came to recently: being someone's girlfriend/wife just isn't that important to me anymore, nor is it very appealing. In fact, belonging to any one person or group isn't very appealing. My friends are amazing but I don't need to see them every day or go out every Friday night the way I used to. I love my family more than I can describe, but the sense of attachment is one that is quite suffocating and I find myself avoiding family gatherings because I just want to be on my own. I'll admit - part of my need for solace comes from the break-up with F. (it's hard to be around my family when I feel like I've disappointed them yet again, even if I haven't) but it also comes from my desire to break free from the notion that everything I do in my life is just a place-holder until I get married and have babies. I am trying to find my place in the world and I need to be alone to do so.
Being the Love of my Life and my loving myself feel like two separate concepts. Loving myself was a hard task - it meant accepting my body, my past choices, the parts of my personality that I don't like and it took a lot of forgiveness. I had to fight to get to a place of truly loving myself and now that I do, it feels awesome. Once, I was ranting to my therapist that I wanted a man who loves me no matter what my body looks like and he better accept every part of me or he could just move on. Amused, she asked "oh, the way you do that for yourself?" I was struck silent for a bit, but she was right. How the hell did I want someone to love me when I didn't even accept who I was? That was when I began opening up my heart and the love I so desperately needed for myself began to grow.
Being the Love of my Life is something different. It means that I finally believe that I am truly enough - that I am the sum of my parts and that even though the parts are far from perfect, they are mine. Loving myself means that I am willing to hold out for someone who treats me well; being the Love of my Life means that I treat myself well and no one else really matters. I haven't completely accepted myself as the Love of my Life, but I like the concept of truly being enough for myself. Again, I've written about these concepts for the last year and a half, but believing it is a completely different level of thinking.
There are no wedding bells in my immediate future and I am not the slightest bit interested in getting into a relationship. Partly because I gave a lot of energy to my relationship with F., but this doesn't feel like the typical "I'm so hurt I can't imagine doing this again" feeling. On the contrary, I don't feel the usual deep cut of hurt and I am not afraid of loving someone again - it's just that right now, I want to save my love for myself. Relationships are not appealing to me.
My writing, on the other hand, excites me. I think about it all the time and when I'm not near my computer or notebook, I miss it. I am shaping words in my head and daydreaming about our future. Stories are constantly bouncing around and I have a huge amount of creative energy. This love story is just beginning and the best part is that I am the person who is writing it.
Next time: Confessions of a Weight Watchers Drop-Out
Very, very awesome entry! Oh, and the song, it has me wanting to travel back in time. You're awesome.
ReplyDeleteThank you! Yes, love the music from those days as well.
Deleteno more f-ing placeholders. amen
ReplyDelete