I spent seven years in an ultimately empty relationship in which I only felt misunderstood. The fit between my ex-husband and myself resembled a longer, more drawn out version of the feeling that I had while being a member of a wedding party in early April 1992.
At that time, everyone in the wedding party lived in Orlando, while I lived in Atlanta and had to drive down. I missed all the fittings for the hideous bridesmaids' dresses and had to be fitted into mine in just a few hours on the day before the event. The front of the dress was cut way lower on me than on the other girls and the seamstress never managed to really fix that. Plus, the puff-ball shoulder thingies seemed to be as large as my head, whereas on the other girls' shoulder puffs seemed more managable.
Then came the shoes... black pumps. Yuck, but I can deal, except that the bride purchased the wrong size for me... 7 1/2. I wear an 8 1/2, same as her sister, who, because she lived nearby, had already grabbed up that pair and started wearing them around to break them in. I was stuck with a pair of shoes that were a whole size too small for me. Not just that, it was a 3 inch heel with a viciously pointed toe. There are no better torture devices known to man or woman than shoes of this variety.
On the day of the wedding, we all had our hair done at a local salon. The inexperienced newbie assigned to do my long, curly locks had no clue how to work with my hair type as he'd only had experience with short hair styles. Everyone else's hair was done and fabulous and we were out of time and there I sat... looking like the love child of Diana Ross and Bozo the Clown.
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Some other pro rushed over, shoved him aside and said something that made him burst into tears, then began to rip through the rats nest in my hair (yet more torture) for the next 20 minutes until she'd created something that looked like a gift box bow on the back of my head... sprayed that until it was rock-hard and sent me on my way with the rest of the girls.
There are pictures of me from this event and I wish they would disappear. I look like a total asshat... a 21-year-old with the youthful face of a teenager, wearing a dress that could make Tara Reid blush, crammed into tiny shoes like Cinderella's step-sisters, and with what looked like a birthday present on the back of my head sandwiched between two growing MANITOUs. Classy. So very classy.
I was also mortified to be walking down the aisle with a white-haired man 35 years my senior. As a dancing partner later on at the reception and with several stiff screw-drivers on his breath (and not enough on mine because I was without my i.d. and the bartenders refused to believe that I was old enough), my dad's buddy insisted on grinding my crotch into his thigh as I kept trying to lean back for some distance, but I realized doing that only gave him a better view down the front of my dress. I'm guessing that as a paired couple, we looked like something straight off the cover of Pedophilia Today. And did I mention I was also being hit upon by a 12-year-old there?
I endured all of that for the longest 10 hour day of my life... even giving birth three times within the ensuing 5 years never erased the agony of that day. Got a good picture yet? Maybe this will clarify things: remember Molly Ringwald in SIXTEEN CANDLES? Think that... only much more fucked up... and with no cute beefcake to drive me away in a Porsche boxster afterwards.
The icing on the cake of this story is that rather than my only experience as a member of a wedding party being something as normal as, say, a sister's wedding, this affair was my damn FATHER's wedding, marrying a woman 15 years younger than himself and just 7 years older than me. Why? Probably because we're talking about something that involves me and my so-called-Jerry-Springer-Show-life.
Added to this, one of her sisters graduated from high school with me and we sat next to each other all of Senior year English Lit class just four years earlier. At that reception, she leaned over and exitedly said, "Sherri, can you believe it? I'm your aunt now! And I'm just 4 days older than you!" All I could think of were lines from BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, like: "'Remember when you asked your mom to prom?' 'Shut up, Ted!'" As I looked around at the attendees... many of whom were people that had gone to school with me, but none of them were invited by me... I realized that my life had become a John Hughes version of TWILIGHT ZONE.
My best friend finally arrived to my rescue near the end of the day and luckily had her i.d. with her so that we could finally start pounding a few drinks as I relayed the day's events to her. Suddenly we were yanked up from our bitchy coven as we were told that it was time to catch the bouquet while being forcefully escorted to the dance floor to a throng of desperate, single women. We decided that it would be safest to stand in the back so not to get tackled by some love-starved loser.
The huge bouquet got flung and, of course, headed straight for the back of the crowd. As if performing some synchronized, rehearsed line dance, she and I took one step away from each other and the bouquet landed square between us on the floor, spraying petals everywhere. We just looked at each other and shrugged, as neither of us wanted that hideous thing or the "curse" that came with it. Yes, it was partly fear that made us step out of the way, but we were also both too tipsy to give a fuck at that point. My new step-mother flew into a hissy fit and demanded that I pick up the bouquet and give it back so that she could give the "non-spoil sports" a chance... so I shrugged again and did as she asked, while my friend cackled and rubbed in the fact that I'd "touched it first!"
That one day sums up so much of my life in many ways: an uncomfortable fit, a horrible mess, a forced effort, and a jaded response.
Six months to the day after that wedding, I met my ex-husband. I had been getting to know a truly beautiful Norwegian man at that time, who was already a friend and the sweetest guy ever, but he started talking about marriage and green cards on our very first date and that scared me quite a bit after the whole wedding bouquet thing. So when my roommate from hell set me up with her boyfriend's sad-sack friend, I thought, "Yeah, sure. At least he won't be needing to get married real soon." And with that, I canceled my next date with my beautiful Norwegian friend and scheduled a first date with the sad, lonely friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. Three months later to the day of our first date, I realized that I was pregnant. Since I had been through an abortion a year earlier, that wasn't an option. I told him that I was continuing with the pregnancy and he just shrugged and went along with my request that he join me in the same way that I shrugged when I was asked to pick up that stupid bunch of flowers.
I never had a wedding myself, not even after getting preggos, so my only experience being in one has come from that wretched freak show that's been permanently etched into my brain. You see... instead of a wedding, my marriage vows were "I-doed" in an oh-so romantic courthouse, because after you've already given birth 3 times, a wedding seems a little anti-climactic. So yup, there we were... squeezed in between some guy from the local grocery with about 500 bounced checks needing to be stamped for collection and an underage Guatemalan couple with their interpreter/guardian who, from what I could piece together in Spanish, wanted them to be married to either start making babies or legitimize the one they already started. I'm not clear on which it was.
Three children and seven years later to the day that we met, I found out that he was having an affair with a co-worker who was 11 years older than him. He said that he had a right to be happy at last and never once apologized for his actions. I used to blame my psycho roommate for the match up, but I could just as easily blame that fucking wedding bouquet incident too.
I tend to fall into things ass-backwards, I suppose. Once upon a time, I really had stopped believing in love. My parents were having the lives that I should have been having... mom going to college and graduating, dad getting married and talking about starting a family... while I was having an abortion and floundering alone in art school. So I decided to settle for less than my ideal fit and live with the dis-ease of being misunderstood just to find some sort of pseudo-comfort in a world that seemed to leave me feeling more and more isolated.
Unfortunately, if you don't really find the right fit and decide to settle for it anyway, you're going to live in pain and have scars for a long time to come. I twisted my face into a smile on a regular basis when people asked me how life was going while I was married to that man, much the same way that I did when I was forced to wear those cruel shoes and smile for the posterity photos all day at my dad's wedding. I tried to take my mind off the pain by distracting myself for years with ideas like, "Who really is fully happy anyway?"
If you've read my blogs this past December, most of you saw that I hit a mental "RESET" button at some point there. I changed my look on life and made a conscious decision to stop wearing the wrong shoes.
I really wasn't sure if it was possible for me to find a good fit because I'm so odd in so many ways. It's not easy being kinda artsy and yet want longevity and family-related stability. The artsy guys are allergic to family stuff and the normal guys all get a little freaked by my inability to toe-the-status-quo-line. But I recently found a great fit by accident. I thought, "No, those shoes still might belong to someone else who doesn't want them right now, but who might demand them back at some point. I should wait it out." However, I realized that I was being drawn to this perfect fit in a way that I'd never been drawn to someone before now. I simply couldn't stay away.
As you've read below, I met someone who seems like he was designed for me in so many ways. The only problem is that he's not free yet to fully be with me in every sense of the word and so we must exist in our own little bubble right now. This is my luck, to get someone made-to-order, who speaks and seems to be pulling sentences straight from my own thoughts, who also comes from a failed marriage, but who still has many hurdles to jump in his own pair of cruel shoes before he can catch up to where I am.
But if he decides that the hurdles look too high or taking off those ill-fitting shoes might be too painful, and he goes back to the starting line out of some form of separation anxiety or possibly a martyr complex, then I will only have had a glimpse of what a perfect fit feels like.
Still, it does give me so much hope, regardless of the timing. It's so easy right now, so comfortable... for the first time, there's no struggle to "make it fit" or feeling of mismatched soles/souls. I wish he could just tap into my heart and experience through me how hard that really is to find... how in five years of meeting people and trying them on, only to discover mismatch after mismatch and feel yet more alienated with each passing person... and that finding such an easy fit doesn't just "happen" like that every day.
This life can be filled with so many lessons from other people, like going through a terrible relationship in order to recognize and appreciate a really good thing when it finally comes along. Walking in the wrong shoes for so many years can leave you with some impressive scars, but it can also teach you to appreciate a comfortable fit when you finally find it. Hopefully, when such a lesson is put to the test, you are able to recognize it and not let the moment get away.
All this talk about shoes and weddings as a metaphor has suddenly jarred another thought loose in my brain. The first weekend of October 2004, I was visiting Chicago to put some closure around a previous visit that had caused a big rift in my life: a very brief and steamy affair with a man whom I'd considered my ideal since my youth... an affair that ended badly on both of our parts in 2001.
It was three years later and the weekend of his wedding celebrations, which I gracefully declined to attend out of respect for his new bride's joy and comfort... and I didn't want him to feel like he needed to apologize to me in person, even though we'd already put that to rest in email form. I just know what kind of good person he is and he'd take time away from his 250 guests just to make me feel better.
Anyway, I went to Chicago to just be there in the same city at that same moment when he was moving into a new phase of his life, with my own hopes that I could feel that kind of energy... moving forward, full of hope. And amazingly, it really was palpable.
My friend and Chi-town tour guide for the weekend took me into her favorite shoe store on my first day there, which was awesome, because I'd always admired Fluevogs on other people and wondered where those stores were located. While feeling full of energy and at probably the very same moment that my former flame was saying his I-do's in front of friends and family, I cheerily walked past pair upon pair of beautifully crafted footwear.
Suddenly, I stopped in front of a pair that I simply had to have... they were bright red with a pink flame swooshing down the length of them and part of the Fluevog "Angels" sole family... imagine bowling shoes, only much, much, much cooler. And they were on sale, marked down about $50, making my heart skip a beat even more and adding to the whole "kismet" feeling. (I know, I'm a dork.)
I asked a clerk if I could try on a pair in 8 1/2 and she said, "Mmm, well, all of these that you see marked down right here are limited editions and only one of each size was made. So what you see is all that we have, which means this is the only pair left, and it's ...[pause as she picked up the shoe]... um, incredible, it's an 8 1/2 exactly." I put them on immediately and they felt like they were made for me and are still my favorite pair of shoes today, getting me compliments and comments on a regular basis.
So on the day of an ex-lover's wedding vows, and exactly 5 years from the moment that I found out of my ex-husband's affair, and 7 years from the moment that we shared our own vows in the courthouse, and exactly 12 years from the moment that he and I met... there I stood in the only size left of a limited edition pair of shoes that felt like they'd been waiting for me to find them, right there in the city of my birth no less!
There is no key to finding happiness or to unlocking the mysteries of the heart, that's why it's a mystery. But everyone knows when they see two people cut from the same cloth and how beautiful they look together... it makes you want to spend time with them in the hopes to unravel some of that mystery for yourself. I used to look at those couples that make everything look so easy and wish I could be like that one day.
It occurred to me that I've finally stopped wishing for that day. It has arrived at last.
I know that I said that I wouldn't write about my muse again and I've tried to stay as far from our current musings as I could, but just like my feelings for the man himself, I can't seem to stay away for long. In my future life, I'll talk more openly about all the things I've come to appreciate in this great fit. But for now, I'll just express it all in one syllable:
*sigh*
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