lights in the dark in 2015

Dear friends and family,

Yes. I’m a little scared. I’m getting married in 15 days. 14 now, technically. Two weeks from now is my wedding date. It’s a big change. It’s a big emotional development. It’s permanent and religious and it’s everything. I’m scared. Aaron’s scared. We’re jittery and full of nervous energy and I had my first legitimate wedding bad dream this afternoon during my nap. I’m sure it won’t be the last. This is huge and terrifying for two people barely making it as it is and barely feeling like legitimate, functional adults in society on any given day.

Please don’t psychoanalyze my anxieties. Don’t pat me on the head and tell me you’re sure I’ll be fine. Don’t try to logic away my nervousness. Don’t harp on just focusing on the joy of “my” day. I know you don’t know what to say and you’re just trying to be polite, but just stop. Stop being concerned that I’m not delirious with joy and that I don’t have stars in my eyes.

Let me react how I react. Let me explore and work through my feelings and reactions as they naturally occur. I know I’m not a glowing, delighted bride. I’m apprehensive and I’m stoic and that’s because I am naturally apprehensive and stoic. I’m not ever mindlessly happy about anything except maybe the cheeseburger right in front of me. I have the mind of a weasel, always looking for a way out; I have been phobic of commitment for as long as I can remember; I am always expecting something to go wrong and planning a contingency; I have always, always hated broadcasting my deepest emotions and I loathe vulnerability. I am deciding to rebel against all of that and the emotional and cognitive dissonance is not comfortable. No amount of marital bliss and wedding-day joy is going to override who I am.

I am marrying someone who spent 2.5 years in Kuwait and Afghanistan for the hell of it and money and he wouldn’t have me any other way. Our relationship was established because I wasn’t (overly) fazed by suicide bombers on his base or mortars falling nearby. Neither of us are content with Instagram-filtered selfies against a sanitized background or people pandering to cookie-cutter expectations of mass-produced luxury. Seriously, I promise, we don’t care about monogrammed napkins and cutesy customized silverware and we hate fondant. Our ideal honeymoon is in the literal middle of nowhere, hurtling across a forgotten road as fast as conditions allow. Our lives are rough and tenuous and our relationship started with the intent to never see each other again; let us be us.

Hosting a giant party to celebrate feelings that we can barely process any given day is stressful and uncomfortable. Our parents aren’t paying for it. We are foregoing almost every standard American tradition because we can’t afford it. We don’t even have a wedding cake. We are already incredibly self-conscious about this (but more or less happy with the way things have worked out). Every stress and challenge of wedding planning has been ours (mine) to swallow and it has taken its toll. I am exhausted by it. I am emotionally done with people fussing at me about their travel arrangements. We are exhausted and emotionally spent.

Your insistence on joy and credit cards and loose wallets and asking mommy and daddy and when’s the open bar and seriously why aren’t you spontaneously squealing is, frankly, ridiculous and a little bit insulting. I’m not 17 and going to prom–and even when I was, I wasn’t all that excited.

Your additional side-eying, pointed questions, talking to vendors on our behalf, thinly-veiled criticism, and general but why aren’t you over the moon is really, really not welcome. Please just stop. If you must, just smile and nod understandingly when I say I’m stressed out by it and ready for it to be over. Please don’t breathe down my neck like I’m doing something else wrong. (Because yes. My stressed out feelings are wrong. Sure.)

We ran into this after the engagement, remember? The happier and more excited I am, the more confident and contemplative I become. I don’t get drunk on joy, I get completely detached and sober so as to process and analyze every little fiber of what’s got me so happy, until I look shut down.

Be excited for me! Be happy for us! Be excited for the pig and pie and doughnuts! It’s awesome! I can’t wait!

But please stop projecting your feelings on me, because I am half-robot and am the weasel king in my spare time, and I’m sorry, Wedding Barbie with the french manicure and delicate updo and $100 shoes, I ain’t you.