lowered expectations?

i don't expect to get married.

when i was a little kid i used to expect it. after all my parents were married, and their parents were married. (and divorced, and re-married). people got married on tv. i was a flower girl in my aunt's wedding. we would play MASH and try to figure out which boy in our class we would marry. we would flip through the catalogs from department stores and pick which furniture and blenders we would have in our grown-up houses when we grew up and got married.

i don't know. at some point between then and now, maybe in the midst the difficulty i found in a previous long term relationship that almost ended in marriage that taught me everything i needed to know about love and everything i needed to know about disaster in one climactic opus, or maybe in the fast crushes and hard crashes i've had since then - at some point i have learned that relationships are not easy. even when everyone's intentions are pure and sweet. even when the love is brilliant. even when the sex is good. even when the goals are similar. even when the minds meet.

i've seen marriages and shack-up-ages and long term relationships with all different kinds of people from all different walks of life, and the one thing i can say about all of them is that you always, always, ALWAYS get more than you bargained for to deal with. so you betta love the one you with. and you better be prepared to deal with some shit. even when you can't remember why you love the one you with. and you better be prepared for boredom. and the unexpected. (well, wait, how can you prepare for the unexpected - scratch that - let me phrase it another way.) you should resign yourself to the fact that some stuff is going to happen that you ain't know was coming and that you won't know the answers to everything, and on top of that, somehow in the midst of all of this you're sposed to be willing and able to do what it takes to hold your relationship together. cause see, that's the heart of the marriage vows.

i, glory, take you, man, through whatever hell and high water may come and interrupt this pleasant daydream we think is coming after we smear wedding cake on each other's faces. i promise to bust my ass to stay with you and be good to you despite the fact that all probabilities are stacked against us, because i want to be flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone, cause i love you just that much. wow. that's serious.

i don't know if i can, uh... whew! i mean... for me to feel like that he really gon have to come with it! i guess the reason i can't imagine myself married is because i have a hard time believing that i can find the emotional security and emotional fidelity that i am looking for in a mate. i need a ride or die dude on an emotional level. and so far, my batting average sucks so bad i really should just stay out of the rotation.

which is really sad, because i find myself vacillating between deciding to do just that (leave my emotions in my diary and out of relationships) or trying to be open to the possibility of sharing my inner self again. maybe it's a phase. or maybe it's the beginning of what i'll call, the bitter black woman syndrome. y'all know that lady in her *insert decade of age here where people decide if a woman ain't been married by that time, her dried up eggs ain't neva getting no play* who has never been married, takes real good care of herself and swears she don't need a man for nothing. we all know her. oh Lord, please don't let me turn into that lying, dildo wielding, ben and jerry's eating, cock blocking all her girlfriends perpetrator. i'm more scared of being her than i am of not being married.

but we shall see, won't we? for now, i'm just living life. you know, most of us say "never again" after having been hurt. and then the next thing you know, "again" done snuck up on somebody. here's to hoping one of my "again's" gets it right. after all, i said i wasn't expecting it... i never said i didn't want it. i'm a dreamer, remember?