Loving Texts from my Mother

It was 7 in the AM; I had just woken up because I was so tired I didn't wake up at my customary 6 AM to work out (I do it for the wedding dress). I got three texts messages from my mother. These were not:

1. Good morning.
2. I love you.
3. Have a great day. 

In fact, these texts demanded to know if I had already bought the things she said at 7 PM last night I should go buy. For the wedding.

Gee, mom, I'm sorry I had to go to sleep early after seeing my boyfriend because I have to wake up early in order to, well, I don't know... GO TO WORK?

I know I should be doing wedding stuff, but between working, working out, and dealing with my puppy, something's got to give (I've also been applying to jobs everywhere).

Sigh. 

As of now, the score stands:

Wedding Planning: 7

Me: 0

Wedding Planning and Keeping Score

We set a date for the wedding. And by we, I mean my boyfriend (fiance? I don't know how this works if I don't have an actual ring on my finger at the moment due to budgetary reasons) suggested it and I shrugged and said, "Okay. Let me ask my mom if that sounds like a plan."

Then, I called and I asked her.

And that was that. For a whole week.

During that week, I went to work, did my laundry, and pushed the idea of wedding bells from my mind. Even if there was a date, it just didn't feel that real. A week later, my very nervous boyfriend asked my parents for their blessing (belatedly, which added to his already mounting nerves).

After the nerve-wracking conversation (on my end, anyway, everyone else was super happy and having a grand ol' time), the wedding planning officially started. I was excited, my boyfriend was excited, and our parents were super excited. Adding to that excitement was the fact that my dread about my mom taking the reins of the wedding planning didn't come to life (at least not right that moment).

Lulled into a false sense of security, I started designing the invitations, created a secret board on pinterest, and did all of the things that one is supposed to do when planning a wedding (roaming the internet for wedding blogs and weddinspiration). Also, I drove my boyfriend insane with wedding questions (side note: he's doing remarkably well and humors me to no end. Poor unfortunate soul).

Isn't this pretty, though?

In one week, I'd had a few hour-long conversations with my mother about the wedding planning. Although our tastes are as aligned and together as Lindsay Lohan and sobriety, I could tell she was biting her tongue (unlike last time she and I attempted to plan a wedding) and was all about what I wanted. This cooperation lasted one whole week (new record!).

Then she sent me a set of pictures of things she'd already bought and had not consulted me on. She bought sparkly notebooks and put wedding stickers on them. Sparkly notebooks. About forty of them. Now, I'm not opposed to sparkle. I love sparkle. However, sparkle has no place in a rustic outdoor wedding. So I called her to ask about this, and, as it turns out, one of her sisters was the instigator behind this purchase. One thing about my family: once her sisters get involved everything tends to spiral out of control.

While we were talking and I was trying to explain my vision and why the sparkly notebooks with wedding themed stickers weren't a good idea (so tacky, imo), her sister kept interrupting and saying my ideas were stupid. At which point I hung up and started to cry (right in front of my boyfriend). Way. To. Go. Well played, wedding planning, well played.

Wedding Planning: 1
Me: 0

After a week of not talking to my mother (she responds well to the silent treatment; she gives it often enough to people anyhow), we've gone to a better place. And by better I mean I don't stress out about most of the details and let her have some of her way. In other words, I've come to the realization that I can't control her or turn her off. My mom will be my mom. So what if she just bought a dress that photographs eerily like ivory, even though she swears its champagne? So what?

Wedding Planning: 2
Me: 0

And so what if one of my extended family members, someone who I love, is being snarky and offering (and by offering I mean pushing) advice that I really did not ask for? Plus, what do I care if this person referred to my wedding as a backyard wedding (slap.in.the.face)?

Wedding Planning: 4 (this deserves +2)
Me: 0

So what if the guest list is at almost at 150 at the moment? I mean, my cutoff was 100, but I can't cut anyone at this point, especially since my boyfriend's parents are paying for food.

Wedding Planning: 5
Me: 0

You know, wedding planning should be fun. It just hasn't been my experience thus far.

At least it's going smoother than the first time I tried to plan a wedding (aka, the wedding that never was because my ex broke up with me over the phone and called me a stupid slut months later).

That is all.

UPDATE: My mother keeps calling me every single day while I'm at work, asks what I'm doing (quick answer: working), and demands I do wedding planning stuff (I have no time for this during the work week). I now have the to-do list from hell.

Wedding Planning: 6
Me: 0

Navel Gazing, et al.

My best friend from high school got married this weekend. It occurred to me, while we were all standing in the courthouse, that our fourteen year old selves could have never predicted how everything would unfold. I suspect fourteen year old me would have been disappointed in how my life has turned out. Then again, fourteen year old me didn't know the first thing about life. Mid twenties me doesn't know, either. The difference is that mid twenties me knows she doesn't know anything, while fourteen year old me thought she had everything figured out.

This makes me wonder, what will mid thirties me's life look like? Will I have a better job, paid off all my crippling debts and have started a family? In a time where we all seem to be overqualified, under-payed and at times unemployed, what does the future hold for us millenials? If the baby boomers can't retire due to economic reasons, the economy keeps going to shit, and the rest of us are performing in menial jobs because we have to "pay our dues" without regards to education level achieved, what does the future look like for us?

Now, there's a lot of speculation lately of how the millenial generation is a self-absorbed vacuum of nothingness. If we were judging based on instagram and facebook accounts alone, I would be inclined to agree that my age group has perfected the art of navel-gazing. However, I believe the act of navel-gazing is one that has happened across the board in previous young working generations. It just so happens that technology and "putting everything out there" in order to connect in a disconnected society has become more and more accessible with technological tools (i.e., smartphones, laptops, tablets). I, for one, can say that no matter how seemingly self-absorbed these internet personas seem to be, most of my peers are hardworking, bright individuals that somewhat differ from the avatar they create online.

However, at times it seems like everything is just not uphill, but vertical from here on. I've been working very hard all my life to get to a financially secure point in my career. I have taken jobs and internships that would allow me to climb to a respectable point in my career. So far, it looks like financial independence, getting out of student loan debt is out of my reach, no matter how hard I work.

Sometimes I look back and wish I hadn't taken out student loans. I only took them for my graduate degree  because it seemed like a worthy investment at the time. After all, education is something you invest in wholeheartedly with the promise of a better future and more opportunities coming your way. Alas, for now, I just sit in my tiny work space dreaming of new things to come, better opportunities and trying to exhaust all and any possibilities.

I am exhausted, but hopefully mid thirties me will have a better life for this exhaustion and sacrifice I am currently going through. After all, if my best friend from high school took the marriage step into adulthood, that means we're all moving towards achieving some kind of adulthood in the midst of an economic recession.

Word's Out

I told my mother about the general wedding plans and the world didn't implode.

Ok, so I'm kind of lying. I wasn't the one who broke the news to my mom. It was my dad. I expected her to call in high spirits within half an hour of me talking to my dad, but instead all I got was a Facebook message saying "So, when's the wedding? LOL."

I don't know what scares me more, the fact that my mother seems eerily up to date with technology, or that she's acting very cool about the entire nuptial situation. I mean, she hasn't even told her sisters about it. And I would know. My cousins would have called/texted/IMed/Facebooked me by now (and if not them, their wives would've).

Needless to say, I was freaking out about having to tell my parents. It's not like they would oppose the union, since they like my boyfriend so damn much (I'm pretty sure they want to adopt him). However, this is not my first time around an engagement, or even a sort-of engagement. Last time I dropped this kind of information on them, they wasted thousands of non-refundable dollars.

Thus, I just didn't feel all that comfortable announcing, "You know that time I was getting married and then I didn't get married, so I told you guys I would never, ever get married? Well, about that... My boyfriend and I are planning on getting married sooner rather than later." Awesome, right? Well, I'm sure that's the subtext of what my parents must feel at this point.

Then again, they seem surprisingly calm about  this. Only time will tell. God, please don't let this turn into a circus.

Just in Time for Mother's Day

We're getting married. Maybe. I mean, the plans are definitely there (and by there I don't mean just in my head). We're not officially engaged, which I guess makes us engaged to be engaged (or pre-engaged, as one of my friends so lovingly calls this state).

I'm developing a headache just trying to figure out the correct term for this stage in our relationship.

My boyfriend is telling his parents this weekend. I haven't even decided if telling my parents would be a wise idea at this point, particularly, my mother. I could theoretically tell my dad and make him swear he will keep the secret. Theoretically, because my mother has the power to attain information that the CIA and the FBI don't have combined (also, the power to break down a man). I am strangely proud and terrified of being her daughter.

My mother has been constantly pushing the marriage issue the past few years. Every guy I date is suddenly on her watch list for future husband. I just ignore her comments, and promise her that I will never get married. She really loves when I do that.

Reasons why I am hesitant to tell my mother about the nuptials:

1. As of today and the foreseeable next few months, I have no ring. And this is not a good thing for my traditional mother. She will probably hound my poor boyfriend and insist he take one of the rings she's offering to give him (from her jewelry collection).
2. I want a small, 30 people maximum wedding. She will try to make it into a Hollywood-worthy production, disregard any if all of my input of taste, insist it be in the church, and spend thousands of dollars that I don't have. I don't care for some of my extended family (for valid reasons). She will invite all of the extended family (more than 50 people, by my last count).
3. I'm shy. She will broadcast the news even before I have a ring on my finger and decide to tell people about it.

More and more, I panic about losing sight of what a wedding is truly about. It's not about a party, it's about choosing a day to promise another person that I'll be a part of their team, and that he'll be a part of mine. I don't want the real reason for marriage to get lost in the shuffle of planning, as it does for many of my peers.

In a perfect world, my mother would not try to micromanage weddings. Yet, here I am typing these things into a blog as I struggle to make my choice in telling my parents about this exciting development in our lives. I worry that the stress caused by planning the previous wedding will somehow manifest itself in this new one, and that the results will yield being broken up with. Again. This makes me a bit anxious, and it has nothing to do with telling my mother. I think telling my mother makes things real, and I'm very afraid of things being real because that means I can get hurt again.

But getting back to the matter at hand, telling my mother about our plans is still a complicated issue for me. My boyfriend keeps telling me there's an ocean between me and her micromanaging glory. Though technically true, technology has shortened that gap significantly. Also, she can book a flight to "help" me plan a wedding because she has the summer off.

The masochist in me wonders how she'll react to the news. Will she go into MomZilla mode? Will she be stunned into silence and process the information for weeks on end? Will she faint? Do I have to tell her to sit down first? Will she ask me if I'm pregnant? Will she start harassing me? Will she suggest an elopement?

I guess it's just as well that this weekend is Mother's Day. We shall see.

Disappointing my Mother: One Dream at a Time

I wish I could say that the following types of conversations between me and my mother don't happen often. But they occur more often than I would care to admit.

"So you broke up with [insert name of awesome current boyfriend here] because [insert name of pitiful ex-fiance here] bought you a gigantic diamond ring," my mother accusingly yelled from the other side of the phone.

"Wait, what?" I asked.

This was all new to me. Last I checked, I was still in a stable relationship with my current boyfriend.

"In my dream. Last night," she explained, as if that cleared everything up. "You know, the dream I had last night about you."

"Oh. So?" I asked, looking at my computer screen.

"[insert name of pitiful ex-fiance here] bought you a big rose gold diamond ring and you broke up with [insert name of awesome current boyfriend here] because of it. I was livid. LIVID! How dare you break up with  [insert name of awesome current boyfriend here] because of some diamond?! I thought, 'this slut, how dare she shame me that way, after all the bad things that [insert name of pitiful ex-fiance here]?'"

"Um, mom?" I asked, while my query went unrecognized.

"And then, you had the gall to parade that filthy ring around, like it was some prize. Like that asshole is anything anyone would want to take back after the way he treated you. I cannot believe that you took him back after everything he did, and after finding someone so nice, [insert name of awesome current boyfriend here]. I woke up angry at you."

"Mom, you do know I have no control over what you dream, right?" I asked, as she kept rattling off animatedly at me.

"So then I turned to my coworker and loudly said '[insert name of pitiful ex-fiance here] flew to [insert state I'm living in at the moment] and gave my daughter an enormous diamond ring' so that [insert name of pitiful ex-fiance here]'s current girlfriend could hear it."

"What's happening? I'm confused," I asked, not being able to follow her train of thought.

"In my dream. I'm still talking about my dream."

"I see. Mom, first off, the chances of your dream happening are slim to none. Secondly, there's no diamond big enough that would make me leave [insert name of awesome current boyfriend here] for [insert name of pitiful ex-fiance here]."

"Thank God. Don't leave [insert name of awesome current boyfriend here]."

"Ok, mom, I promise," I replied, knowing there was no use arguing about the fact that her mind conjured this dream, not mine.

"I'm still mad because of the dream. I even told your dad about it. I could not believe you would do that to me."

Ladies and gentlemen, this just goes to show that I have mastered disappointing my mother even in her dreams. 

Reflections on Starting Over

Starting over in the dating world after a soul-crushing failure is both exhilarating and terrifying. Once you decide to start dating again, there's a sense of newness that excites the most skeptical of hearts. After this new relationship smell fades a a bit, doubts and frustrations surface.

When I first started dating after the wedding that never was, I was excited at the prospect of meeting new guys who represented potential life partners. At this point in my life, I was looking for someone who could be my best friend and partner in life, someone who wouldn't bail out when things got rough. Most of all, I was looking for someone who wouldn't call me a stupid slut in the middle of an argument.

After settling down into the confusing dating world, a world that was foreign to me after six years of monogamy, I was frustrated with the way things were unfolding. I've never been good at being patient, and add a dose of Failed Relationship PTSD to that character flaw... Then you have a recipe for disaster.

Looking back, I realize that most of my frustrations stemmed from the fact that the guys I was dating were not really relationship material and because I expected the next guy I dated pick up right where my big relationship left off. That kind of pressure is both unrealistic and crippling to dating.

The truth is that once you're in a relationship for multiple years for one person, you start forgetting how things were at the beginning, wonderful, but not necessarily deep. If that relationship ends, like it did for me, you miss the depth and the things that made you feel cared for as half of a couple. Expecting someone new to pick up where the other relationship left off is unfair. Depth in a relationship can only be cultivated with spending time together, and actually caring for one another.

For someone who likes to go into life from zero to sixty in three seconds, this process was one of the hardest things to realize. I can now say that after a year in my current relationship, I am in a better place depth-wise than I ever was in my previous relationship. I guess that's the thing I've realized, that you can achieve different levels of depth with each person you date, but it still takes time and willingness to start over with someone new.