I'm at that age now where it feels like everyone I know is getting married.

To be fair to me though, in the past year and a half, two of the cousins that I was closest with got married, one more got engaged, then one of the three friends that I keep in regular touch with from school got married, and finally two couples, all of whom I count among my closest friends from college, got engaged.

I feel like even for someone my age that is kind of a lot of important people at once.

When I tell people this their first question is inevitably, are you jealous? Even Q asked me this though of course he meant it completely as a joke. He knows I'm not.

I have to say though that I am very intimidated by the total confidence that they seem to have in the idea.

I am totally amazed that they can sit and plan all of the finer details of a wedding ceremony and a party, engage themselves in long discussions about the venue and the guest list and the food, all based on the solid foundation of the idea that this wedding is actually going to happen on the scheduled date just as planned. I am in awe of their unhesitant happiness, their honest to god faith in the institution of marriage, the surety that they have in themselves that they will be a good partner.

When I was a little bit younger I might have made a snide comment about how people are more interested in planning a party than thinking about a marriage. But again to be fair to myself that’s because I probably hadn’t seen a couple that I felt actually wanted to be together. Marriage to me seemed only slightly better than bilateral indentured servitude. I figured (definitely for cultural reasons) that it was kind of a thing that people only ever did because others expected them to, and then you found someone that seemed tolerable, and then you figured the rest of it out from there.

But I've learned that in this way, just as I've learned in many other ways, that the rest of the world works very differently from my family.

When I see how happy my friends all are, it is completely undeniable that they are doing this for themselves, because they actually want to, because they are totally confident that it will work out, or at the very least, the risks don’t scare them enough from the idea of wanting to be together forever.

And THAT does make me a little bit jealous. Because the idea of marriage totally terrifies me, still, even now, even after having met the happiest married couple I’ve ever seen, who have raised the person who is more patient, more forgiving, more concerned with my mind and my well-being, and more loving towards me than anyone I could ever hope for. Someone who, when I expressed this fear, did not meet it with anger or take it personally, but instead responded with more patience, more understanding. Yet I still fear. I still fear. I still fear.

I want to be the kind of person who definitely wouldn’t break down and question everything suddenly and erratically when picking out a wedding cake. The person that I hope to end up with someday definitely deserves to inspire that level of confidence more than anyone else. 

But I don’t know if I will ever be that way. I’m going to be a wavering, unsure, self-conscious wreck until the day I die, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. But, God, if there is one thing that I get to be sure about, if there’s one thing that I don’t lose sleep over when and if it happens, please, please let it be this. 

I may not always love you

But as long as there are stars above you

You never need to doubt it

I'll make you so sure about it