Out Of My Tree

The two girls I work with are both Muslim, hovering around the 20 year old mark (which yes, makes me feel old old old) and very very hopeful for the future. They both see, and have plans for husbands and babies. One has plans to quit work and become a housewife, the other a five year plan - marriage, see world, babies.

It’s all very organised and definite and planned including an inclusion of the arranged marriage process. Which sounds both equally appalling and appealing to me.

For reasons dull and mundane (tragic affairs and heart break, coupled with the wrong man at the right time and the right guy in the wrong situation) I am afraid of marriage and allowing myself to be close to anyone and being that reliant on anyone, but I think that during the discussion I came off as decidedly bitter which I am… not… really… well… ish.

Oh God, this would be easier with a drink.

I am, of course, an incurable romantic. I believe wholeheartedly in love at first sight and soulmates and magic and fanfares and passion and just knowing and all that because I had it once… and then it went away. I’ve never been good at the whole men/relationship thing either falling too fast or not far enough. There is no happy medium where love and me are concerned. Mind you is there supposed to be?

I missed an old friend’s wedding this weekend. I should have gone but I couldn’t face it - god, how selfish is that? It’s not that I didn’t want to celebrate her happy time I just couldn’t guarantee that I wasn’t going to say something stupid and inappropriate.

I, of course, have planned out my wedding in my head. Flowers and dresses, location of ceremony and reception. The music and the decoration, colour schemes and I think at one point I had even written my vows in my head. But that was at right guy stage.

I have since realised that the dress would require me to be chopped in half or would make me look like an elephant in a monkey costume, that the colour scheme would either be seen as garish or jarring, that the flowers really wouldn’t go, that finding a good jazz quartet isn’t as hard as making your guests happy with your choice of band and mostly that no one that I can imagine will ever want to hear Otis Redding.

Sigh

But surely, one day the unimaginable will happen and he will step out of the darkness and take me in his arms and make it all go away, all this self-hatred and self-pity, he will make my walls come crumbling down, he will bring me into the light and won’t laugh or grimace at what he sees. He will accept my faults and love my differences. He will get down on bended knee because he wants to spend eternity with me. Surely (oh, please) he will put his arms around me and tell me that it is all going to be okay.

But for now leave me with my wishes, hopes, dreams, memories and Otis, dear Otis.

A Number of Things…...