Who is a wedding for?
Is it for the couple getting married? Is it for their families? What if the couple wants different things? What if the couple's families are vastly different? How do you decide what's best, and how many feelings do you take into account?
I wonder sometimes if everyone reaches a point during their wedding planning where they seriously consider shucking all of their plans, eating the losses of deposits already made, and eloping. Greg and I are at that point right now. I really don't know what to do.
Greg has never wanted a wedding, but he's going along with it because I wanted it (or thought I did) and his family would very much like to be there when he gets married.
I wanted a wedding because I want my friends and family to celebrate with me when I get married. I want it to be a joyous occasion. I was never a girl who gave a lot of thought to imagining my wedding, but once it became a reality I invested a lot of time considering what kind of wedding I wanted and who I wanted to share it with.
What I failed to take into account is that, since my family is such a giant awkward mess, maybe the kind of wedding I want really isn't possible. It's going to be terribly stressful for my mom, who hates going back to Tennessee, who has a difficult time being around my dad. It's going to be stressful for my dad, because he can't bring the woman he's living with and because that woman considers me and my mother the source of all the terrible things in her life. It's going to be stressful for my mom's sister and my grandfather, if he can even come, because they can't stand to be in the same room as my father, let alone make polite conversation. It's going to be stressful for everyone to navigate the space between the Nemeth family war zone. I'm used to it, I've been doing it for seven years now, but Greg's family has no idea how fucked up my family really is. As in, no, maybe we can't do family photos. As in, no, maybe my father can't even attend the rehearsal dinner or the reception because his girlfriend won't let him (this is a real possiblity).
Every single time my parents have been in the same state since 2003, it has been tense and unpleasant and usually has resulted in some cataclysm from which it takes months (or years) to recover. Did I think it would all just go away because I was getting married?
I don't know what to do. Part of me thinks, what's the point, why try to make something happen when signs point to the fact that it may not be possible for it to happen the way I want it to? I don't want my mother to be in pain on my wedding day, but she will. I don't want my father to have to negotiate his presence at my wedding, but he will. There is something to be said for a wedding day with just the two of us. Our families might be sad but they would understand, I think. We would have to explain to the people we've sent cards to, to the vendors we've booked, but it's not unheard of for weddings to be cancelled. Greg, I know, would be much happier if we did this. So why have a wedding if it's going to make some people very unhappy?
But it makes me so sad to think about not having my friends there, my family members who have seen me through so much. It's as if I'd be saying to myself, "Well, Clarissa, since your parents got divorced, you can't have nice things."
I want to have a wedding. I do.
But maybe I shouldn't.
And I don't know what to do.
Next week my aunt is flying down to Florida to babysit her grandbaby (my second cousin) for like ten days while the baby's parents are taking their anniversary trip to Belize. Tonight I sent my aunt a text message asking her if she wants adult company while she's there, and I was not really joking, even though Florida usually depresses me.
Here's the thing: right now, it's like 9 degrees in Chicago. It's snowy and icy. It's still getting dark early. I have no job. I have no MFA applications to work on. I have nothing, really, to do with myself except think about MFA programs and worry about MFA programs and I'm slowly driving myself crazy.
Right now, Florida sounds like paradise. My cousins have a pool! I could lay out in the pool all day and read and hang out with my cool aunt and my adorable little cousin and enjoy their palatial house and maybe...forget about MFA programs?
No. No. Real life doesn't work like that.
Are self-lobotomies a thing?
So right now it's 12:44 a.m. and my downstairs neighbors decided it was a great time to blast music. They do this periodically, usually late at night when I'm tired. Last time I went down and knocked on their door until they got scared and turned it off, but that was 2 am on a Thursday. Since it's a Saturday night I'll let them have their fun for a bit. I have too much on my mind right now to sleep anyway.
Today I officially, finally, completely finished all of my graduate school applications. Eighteen of them. The first one was submitted on October 21st. I feel liberated, but also very strange.
Really, I've been working towards this for the last three and a half years. For the last year in particular, I've been extremely focused on getting into a fully funded MFA program. It's strange to think that I'm so close to the moment when it may actually become a reality.
I don't know what I'll do if I don't get accepted anywhere. Unfortunately, with MFA acceptance rates, that's a possibility even if I applied to 30 programs. When I think about my writing, I feel (mostly) good. I feel like I sent in strong samples. I feel like my personal and artistic goals were outlined well, better than the last time I tried this. My grades and test scores and recommendation letters are all great.
But then I start thinking about the numbers. Iowa, for instance, got 1,530 applications last year for 47 spots. North Carolina State had 235 applicants for 8 spots. Miami had 90 for 6 spots. It's absurdly competitive, and unfortunately, it's also absurdly subjective. I know that rejection doesn't mean my writing is bad, it just means that the adcoms didn't see whatever they want to see when they look for students. But it's hard not to feel like a failure if you don't get in anywhere. If I get rejected from 18 schools, or if I get some waitlists that don't pan out, it's going to take me awhile to pick myself up off the floor.
About two weeks from now, the first schools will start contacting the students they want to accept, and the decisions will keep rolling in steadily until mid-April. I think I'm going to be kind of a wreck the whole time. Right now, these programs are all I can think about. I feel like Cartman in the episode of South Park where he tries to put himself into a coma until the Nintendo Wii comes out. I just don't want to wait. I want to wake up and find out where I'm going. I'm even having dreams about MFA acceptances.
Luckily, other things are coming up soon that may help distract me. In early February I'm going to Tennessee with my mom to work on wedding planning, and at the end of February I'm attending the annual AWP conference and bookfair here in Chicago, my very first time at this big event. I've got a new project I'm working on, and I've got lots of good books to read.
Still...it's going to be a long wait. Especially if my neighbors keep blasting their damn bass.
I've heard the warning repeated again and again: don't look at too many wedding blogs. They will make you hate yourself.
I figured I would be immune to this. I usually hate myself for substantial things, like not writing well, or having verbal diarrhea during a job interview. And I definitely do not spend my time perusing websites like theknot or martha stewart weddings, because they tend to make me vomit. I trusted my judgment.
Never, ever do this.
See, even though I avoided the big-name OMG-YOU'RE-GETTING-MARRIED-SO-YOU-NEED-COLORS-AND-A-TROUSSEAU-AND-A-VIDEOGRAPHER-AND-WE-HAVE-A-LOVELY-USERS-FORUM-WHERE-YOU-CAN-CREATE-AN-AVATAR-WITH-YOUR-FIANCE'S-FACE-AND-BE-"MRS.HISLASTNAME"-AND-CAN-POST-PRETTY-PICTURES-OF-YOUR-PRETTY-DIAMOND websites, I did want to do some online recon of normal, sane, fun, pretty weddings. My error was not understanding what it is about wedding blogs that would make me crazy.
Over the last several months, I've gotten into a pleasant Sunday routine. I sleep in, get coffee and breakfast, and then lay on the couch with Greg. We watch football, and while we watch the games, I peruse blogs like 100 Layer Cake, ruffled, and the mother-fucking clearinghouse of Style Me Pretty. That place is like the Kleinfeld's of wedding blogs: they have more shit than anybody. I like these blogs because they don't tell me what to do, or what I need, or what I absolutely have to spend money on, or what is on-trend (usually, anyway). They just show real weddings, and the details of real weddings, with lots and lots and lots of gorgeous pictures of happy people at fun parties. And most of the weddings pictured aren't formal, fancy ballroom weddings, either. They're in barns, they're secular, they're same-sex, they feature brides that aren't always wearing white dresses.
I have gotten a lot of ideas from these blogs, so I'm not trying to trash them. I'm just saying that last weekend, after my seventh hour of wandering through the SMP archives, I started to go a little crazy. I started to get Michelle Bachman eyes:
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| I literally googled "Michelle Bachman crazy eyes" |
The weddings were so amazing! The brides were so gorgeous! The favors/altar/dessert table/decorations were all so handmade and DIY! The centerpieces were all so unique and special to the couple's history!
And then I despaired. I despaired a little something like this:
God, that dress is gorgeous...my dress is definitely not that gorgeous. It's not designer. I am never going to look that good in my wedding dress. God, I hate my wedding dress. Why didn't I look at more places. What if there's a dress out there somewhere that WOULD make me look that good, but I'll never find it because I bought a dress at David's Bridal? Nobody on this entire fucking blog has a dress from David's Bridal. Oh my God. I'm going to look horrible on my wedding day.
Those photos of the bride and groom getting ready are so cute. But...my photographer doesn't have a second shooter. How is she going to get adorable photos of both me AND Greg getting ready on the morning of? Oh my God, I wish I could afford a team of photographers. I'm going to have horrible pictures of me in a horrible dress.
Look at that! She made her very own carnival-style marquee letters! That would be so awesome. I wish I could do something like that. God, I have no crafting skills. I wish I could make decorations that will be special and unique, but I can't, because I suck at everything. God, I hate myself.
Picture me frantically scouring through websites like BHLDN (anthropologie's drool-worthy wedding line) trying to justify buying an entirely new wedding dress and dropping 30 bucks a pop on a stick with a bottle tied to it so I could have convincing "rustic decor." It was bad. It was really, really bad.
I went to bed that night really depressed because I was going to hate my wedding. By that point it was just a foregone conclusion.
And then I snuggled up to Greg, because that's what I do when I feel depressed. And he kissed me on the forehead and told me he loved me. And really it was kind of like he hit me in the forehead with a brick and screamed, "YOU IDIOT!," but in a good way. Because in that moment I realized what a monumental fool I was to be hating myself for buying a dress from David's Bridal.
I don't need a wedding dress, or paper flowers or handmade centerpieces or a fucking mustache prop to get married. NONE of that matters. What matters is me, and Greg. All we need is someone to marry us.
I knew this from the outset. Of course I did. I wasn't even sure I wanted to have a wedding a year ago, because I knew we didn't need all that extraneous stuff. Sure, that stuff can be fun, and great, and memorable, but ultimately it's just stuff. And I knew that.
I had failed to heed the warning. I had crossed into the land of wedding-mania. Through the back door, maybe, but nonetheless I lost myself. Be bold, but not too bold, Spenser warned Britomart, lest she fall prey to the carnal images all over the fortress of the evil enchanter Busyrane...
Okay. Maybe I'm still crazy.
So a year ago I wrote a post detailing a few goals for myself in 2011, and the first one was "focus on my health." Specifically, I wanted to try to get my IBS under control.
I actually achieved this goal, but for whatever reason I never really wrote about it while it was happening. I thought it might do some good to explain how I found a solution, because occasionally people show up to this blog after googling "IBS." One of the most frustrating things about suffering from IBS is that so little is known about it, and so many doctors have no idea what to do about it. It's easy to feel hopeless and lost in your own little world of pain and shame.
In January, I was probably at a six out of ten in terms of controlling my IBS symptoms. I'd had a great deal of success with The IBS diet, something that I discovered on my own and that no doctor I've yet met has ever heard of. This just goes to show you how little attention IBS merits in the medical community compared to other chronic conditions. Anyway, I'd been on the diet since 2008, and it made a huge difference in my quality of life - I went from experiencing terrible pain almost every day to having it maybe 3 or 4 times a month. Big improvement. But still not enough. For one thing, the diet is complicated, and I found that I could not stray from it even a little, which made for some problems when I had little control over what I ate - for instance, at Greenwood in summer 2010, even with its vegan options, just about every meal I would have to eat something that didn't jibe with my system. The result was predictable - pain, lots of it, and urgency, and frequency, just about every day, miserable mornings, and terrible anxiety. My first year at Interlochen, eating Stone cafeteria meals all the time, was the same. Although I was fortunately able to move into an apartment with my own kitchen the second year, it wasn't perfect, and I was definitely having huge anxiety problems on top of the monthly flare-ups. At my lowest point, I was afraid to go anywhere for fear that I might have a flare-up. Something needed to change.
I started by talking to my primary care doctor in Michigan, Kari Young. What I love about Dr. Young is that she immediately accepted that I knew more about my personal situation than she did. Instead of telling me to try things I already knew wouldn't work ("Eat more fiber!"), she asked me what I wanted to do. I came in with two requests - I wanted to start taking Paxil for my anxiety (which I took back in high school for a number of years to get my OCD under control), and I wanted a referral to a gastroenterologist. She did both of those things for me in one appointment. Not all doctors do this, unfortunately, so I would say to anyone who has an unhelpful doctor - try someone else. Keep looking.
In February I had my first appointment with Dr. Rex Antinozzi, a gastroenterologist. I have to be honest, the reason I put off seeing a GI doctor for so long was that I was afraid I was going to have to get a colonoscopy, since that's usually a requirement to be officially diagnosed with IBS. God bless Dr. Antinozzi. He listened to me explain my history and said that, given the consistency of my symptoms over many years and the absence of any indicators of an auto-immune disorder like Crohn's, he felt safe going with the diagnosis of IBS without doing further tests unless my symptoms changed.
He did order some bloodwork, but the only test he wanted to do was a hydrogen breath test. This was a test to see if I had an overabundance of bacteria in my small intestine. As I understand it, the theory is that many IBS patients have too much bacteria in their small bowel because of their mobility problems. No one really knows what causes IBS - some think it is an oversensitivity to pain in the colon, others think it is a problem in the wiring of the brain/gut connection, and others think that at its heart IBS is a mobility problem - your digestive system moves too fast or slow, or just irregularly. One result of this irregular motion is bacteria building up where it shouldn't, thus causing the pain and diarrhea.
Anyway, I went in one morning in March after fasting for 12 hours and took this weird test. I had to drink a little cupful of lactose/sucrose and then sit there for four hours with a timer. Every twenty minutes I would breathe into a little bag. I think there were fourteen bags altogether. They just left me alone with the bags and the timer. I watched TV and thought about how hungry I was. A whole lot easier than a colonoscopy, on the whole. Later they would measure the hydrogen levels in the bags to see if I (or rather, my bacteria) was breaking down the lactose/sucrose faster than normal.
Because every single other medical test I've ever had (including said bloodwork) has always been normal, I assumed this would be the same, so I was surprised when the nurse from his office called and told me that my results indicated that I did have an overgrowth of bacteria. Dr. Antinozzi started me on a two week course of two different antibiotics - Keflex and Flagyl. All told I was going to take seven pills a day for two weeks. I have never taken so many high-dose antibiotics at one time, and I was super-nervous because I knew it would probably wipe out all the bacteria, even the good bacteria, and could potentially make me feel a whole lot worse before it got better. Dr. Antinozzi also recommended that I try taking one capsule of Imodium Advanced (the kind with both loperamide and simethicone) every morning and one before I went to bed, since I told him I'd had good results with this particular drug in the past.
I was really lucky - I had almost no side effects from all the antibiotics. I noticed a HUGE difference within a month. I even cut back from two IMO capsules a day to just one in the morning. By summer, I felt like a totally different person. I think I had one bad day the entire summer. I don't know if it was the Paxil, the antibiotics, or the daily dose of imodium - probably all three. But I can honestly say that I've had virtually no problems since then. I still take Paxil and imodium every day, but that's it. I've even discovered in the last few months that I can stray from my diet sometimes without ill effects - I can even drink coffee again! I've been drinking it almost every day for the past three months with no problem. It's amazing.
So I got lucky on several counts, most notably that I got doctors who listened on the first try, and that I had great health insurance (which sadly I no longer have). There are a ton of people suffering out there who have neither. But that doesn't mean there isn't any hope. Ultimately, with IBS I think the most effective solutions are in the patient's hands. So many doctors - especially primary care docs, who have a wide umbrella of things to treat - just don't keep up with IBS research. My primary care doc, great though she was, had never heard of a hydrogen breath test. Not even my gastroenterologist had heard of this diet that has worked so well for me. And had I not done a lot of reading and research about IBS, I would not have known what to ask my doctor in the first place.
If you have health insurance - talk to your doctor. Find a GI doctor. If they don't listen to you, try another. Be the annoying patient who brings in print-outs of things on the web. Come with ideas and questions. Take charge of your health, because in my experience few doctors will do it for you.
If you don't have the means to see a specialist, I would still urge you to educate yourself. Helpforibs.com is a great place to start - even if this diet doesn't help you, there is a TON of information on the site and lots of things you can try. Peppermint oil capsules, for instance, didn't do much for me, but some people swear by them. Same with soluble fiber supplements. There are IBS groups and message boards all over the internet - another good one is ibsgroup.org. Talk to other people, listen to their suggestions and experiences. It's a cliche, but a long time ago when I had just started this journey to fix my wayward bowels, knowing that I wasn't alone in my suffering was a hugely important moment.
Anyway, that was my long ramble about IBS, but it felt important to share. In fact, thinking of my other goals for 2011, this was about the only one that I achieved completely. Figures that it had to do with poop, right?
A year ago this time, I was visiting my mother and contemplating whether or not it was the right time to take a big step in my life and get engaged to Greg. So much has happened since then, and so much will happen NEXT year, that I feel the urge to take stock of it for a moment.
It's taken some time to get used to the ring on my finger, to referring to Greg as my fiance, to go from fantasizing about a wedding to actually putting one together. But I'm happier now with it, excited about our future together, and more and more certain, every day, that Greg is my match in every way.
This time last year I never would have imagined leaving, but after the incredible and unexpected blessing of Greg's new job, I was able to quit, to uproot and take flight to a new and exciting city where we could live together and not have to take phone calls at midnight. Now, four months after moving and still unemployed, I still can't say that I regret my decision. I don't like being unemployed, but I do like the time to write, work on my grad school applications, and explore Chicago. I don't like having to rely almost entirely on Greg for finances, but it's taken our relationship to a new, more "married" level. I hate the emotional tug-of-war that has been my job search thus far, but I think I'm learning a lot about interviewing and searching, which may come in handy at some point. I miss my students, but I don't miss the constant, unrelenting pressures of living amidst them.
Now it's been two months and she's doing even better than expected. She feels better every day, she's starting cardiac rehab soon, and with luck she'll be around for a very long time, something I will never take for granted again.
2012 is also going to be a big year. By May, I'll know for sure whether I'm going to be attending an M.F.A. program full-time with a teaching assistantship. Six months from today I'll be married. I'm going on a week-long trip to Hawaii in July with Greg to see volcanoes. And in the fall, if I'm lucky, we'll be moving again, this time to one of the sixteen (ugh) towns that houses a university I've applied to. It could be Miami or Minneapolis, Ames or Albuquerque, Carbondale or Corvallis, Richmond or Roanoke. I'm not going to pretend I like not knowing whether I'll be accepted, but I do enjoy the sense of adventure.
I've been more blessed than not in 2011. I hope 2012 will be the same.
One of the reviewers at Bright Wall, Dark Room wrote a piece about Christmas Vacation that unexpectedly took me down memory lane. Truthfully, this piece could have been written about my own father.
My family doesn't have a whole lot of Christmas tradition. We did it differently every year. But the one thing that always happened, as far back as I can remember, is that we'd sit down and watch the Griswold's Christmas disintegrate. We'd eagerly wait for the appearance of Snots. We'd chortle aloud "Merry Christmas! Shitter was full!" and mimic Julia Louis-Dreyfus scowling "I don't KNOOOW, Todd" and laugh at the Christmas lights scene until our faces were wet from the tears.
My favorite thing, hands down, was always seeing my dad laugh. My father's laughter is a wonderful thing, and I used to do anything I could think of to earn it, including quoting Christmas Vacation out of season ("I have to EAT! So I can take my back pills," I used to say to make fun of him for getting older, and adored watching him crack up at the reference). I wouldn't necessarily define my dad as a serious guy, because he's easily amused, but he always worked so much, and so often, that it was rare to see him truly relaxed and happy.
It's been eight years since I've spent Christmas with my dad. Because it's on TV so often in December I usually still wind up watching the movie around the holidays, but it's not the same. Without being able to look for his reaction to his favorite parts, a good chunk of the magic is gone, and it becomes just a silly, kind of dumb Christmas movie.
There are other movies that I love for sentimental reasons, but this is the only one that I associate so strongly with my dad. I can still laugh thinking about certain scenes or quotes in the film at the memory of my dad cracking up at them.
I think he still watches it every year. I wonder if it makes him think of me?