What, like you're supposed to know how huge the universe is at nineteen? Fact remains, were I to turn back time, go to when we were twenty, before it all went to pot, I would STILL look him up and do it all to kiss him. I would always want to be the owner of that memory. But not if the wellbeing of entire humanity depended on it, would I marry him, swearing I will always believe in him. He made me a liar and I am not particularly fond of lying. How was I supposed to know that of 8 billion humans on the planet, I'll manage to jump a broom with the one who has never met anyone he couldn't disappoint? Who the fuck has a right to believe I'd be a better woman to have stayed married to that? Exhaust myself trying to elevate that to a status of a gentleman? Fuck that. Behind every powerful man there's a charisma-less gold-digger without intelligence or balls to achieve her own mastery.
It's certainly a scary word. With the exception of an ex-mother-in-law, I've never heard anyone get happy over the word 'divorce'. And I was just watching a TV show in which it's stated just how many modern marriages end in it.
So?
Thing is, people like to be married. Many,if not most. It feels good to belong; one whom you can trust completely, who doesn't have to pretend around you: it feels good to call someone HOME. Where you can cry ugly, where you can fart, open your pants when you eat. Not all at once, hopefully, but you know what I mean. Someone who knows just the kind of nachos you like, just how many kisses will fit into a moment, just the right way to curl around you before one of you has to wake up and go to work. Someone whose sleeping position matches yours like a Lego. There has to be just one person - can be more, but it's great if there's just the one - to listen to all your shitty poetry and lay it for you gently that it's really shitty and offer to pay for a writing course for your birthday; someone who will eat the horrible buckwheat soup you prepare and who (after you've yelled at them: You have no idea what it feels like to be me!!) will look at their watch and say: ah, it's that time of the month , I better buy a lot of chocolate and tissues, and possibly a small fluffy furry pet.
Why would it be wrong to try somebody and then change the model if it doesn't fit? Nobody buys a car forever, a camera or a coat. Sure, back in the day there weren't many options and you really did have the same house, table, cart and shoes for life. But people grow up. The looks, vehemence and 'I want the whole world to lick my ass!' I found overwhelming in my first attempt proved poorly fitting, like a really large umbrella in high wind or a tray loaded with too many cocktail glasses. At the time it probably suited my own view of the skies. It certainly coincided with a sense of 'wolves mate for life, so you better pick someone who keeps your engines constantly running'.
I mind it when people consider divorce to be a bad thing. It's not the middle ages anymore. You get to live for more than thirty. (Except that one guy whose funeral we're going to attend tomorrow, but that's another story.) It's certainly romantic and it calls for some deep, long introspection at your values if you happen to have to compromise some. Many people choose to stop being bisexual. Many abandon being creative. Not because they are asked to, but because it feels great enough to be loved. All of that is fine and dandy, even if I notice not many people who married at twenty and stayed married until well into their old age were artists, at least not both of them. Maybe he was. Rarely she was. But I will always want to know what it tastes to kiss him and then I will never want to pay anything else regarding him. Doesn't matter how many lives I live. A perfect bad kiss, then an eternity spent with someone a lot better at kissing, who says: You jump. I'll wait here and if it turns out flying's not your strong suit, I'll catch you.
