Carried Me Through Desperation

To the one that was waiting for me.

The past week and a half has been a whirlwind of sorts.  The combination of studying for finals, prepping for my cousin’s wedding and a two week trip to the East Coast, which includes trips to Philly, NYC, Jersey, and the DMV area, has left me in a state of exhaustion.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m stoked to be out here instead of being stuck in boring California.  But, especially during the Saturday of the wedding, the exhaustion caught up to me.

I had come to Philly Thursday morning running on 1.5 hours of sleep, and until Saturday night (technically Sunday morning), I had gotten less than three hours of sleep each night. The day of the wedding consisted of one hour of sleep, and an endless barrage of to-do’s prior to the ceremony.  Accompanied with the lack of sleep the whole week due to finals, all I wanted to do was die on Saturday.  I was pulled one way to help with the center pieces, the other way to help with a playlist that never got to play, another way to choreograph a dance, and another way to run countless errands.

In the end, I ended up missing the Gaye Holud at an ungodly 6AM, and the Baraat, which I made a playlist for that never saw the light.  I also missed the bride and groom’s entrance into the reception and didn’t eat dinner at the wedding.

The disorganization for the wedding was astounding; I never thought a wedding being run by a planner could be done so poorly, but I can’t even blame the planner.  My family has never been organized.  In fact, we are pretty much the definition of disorganization.  But you would think that if there was a planner, some type of organization would be followed. But somehow, my family managed to override the careful planning of a wonderful wedding planner and bring about a disastrously disorganized mess of a wedding that can really only be done through my relatives.

I have never really been the person to sit down, plan, sort, and think logically, despite my science background.  That is simply not the way I function.  It’s not necessarily the best way to go about life, but it’s worked thus far, and you know what they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

However, when I arrived Thursday at the ass-crack of dawn, instead of heading to sleep to catch up on some much needed Z’s from a not-so-hot finals week, I was immediately sent to run errands that should have been done weeks prior to the week of the wedding.

Now, this isn’t to say that I didn’t want to help with the festivities.  The cousin getting married wasn’t just my cousin, but she was the older sister I never had.  So, I put my feelings to the side because the most important day of her life, not mine, was coming.  And I was ready to do anything to help make this the best for her and her future husband.

I take that back, she is like my second older sister, right after my brother. 😉

But, despite my best efforts, my dysfunctional family always manages to disorganize everything and create huge messes of everything that don’t need to be messed with in the first place.  And they manage to start drama or rekindle the flames of old drama during the MOST inconvenient times.  As my generation of people try to put any and all beef to the back and try to bring about happiness for my cousin who has done so much for us, the older generation cannot stop their bullshit arguments for the sake of their daughter’s/niece’s wedding.  It got so annoying that I tried to avoid and ignore all the adults, including my parents, who I haven’t seen in months, at all costs.  And as always, all the drama that never should have been talked about in the first place caused an incredible amount of disorganization that all ended up falling on my cousin, despite how much we other cousins tried to keep it off of her.  She already has the tendency to take things personally and get emotionally attached to everything, which is why we purposely kept everything going on behind the scenes from her.  She cares too much about familial issues, trivial or not, something I don’t do enough of. My family is cuckoo, I don’t have the energy to care about the trivial shit.

But, despite the shit-show of stuff that happened prior to the wedding, the end result was a success.  The bride and groom enjoyed their time celebrating their love and matrimony, and we as the spectators watched lovingly as their happiness spread contagiously around the room and seeped into the hearts of even the emotionally unavailable like myself.  The alcohol was flowing, the music was popping, and two beers, three vodka cranberries, a green tea martini, and countless ratchets dances later, I was propelled through the wedding of two people who I care deeply about.

Because not even fucked up family dynamics can stop a love like theirs.

#curryfriedchicken

 

Just That: Trapped.

Go on and marinate on that for a minute. 

In less than two weeks, my cousin is getting married.

She is the first cousin in the group of cousins I grew up with that is getting married. Rightfully so, she is the oldest one.  She just turned 29 in June, and in Indian culture, for a female, getting married that “late” in life is considered taboo.  Even my parents, who are far more progressive than many other Indian parents, have told me that I need to get married by 25 or 26.

Let me remind you that I’m 22.  And with my track record, there is not a chance in hell that I’m going to be married by 26.

My second oldest cousin that I grew up with is turning 27 in September, and her mom already told her that she won’t be paying for my cousin’s wedding because she is over 24 years old, which was her marriage “deadline.”  In my cousin’s defense, she was in a relationship at 24, but it was abusive.

The older generations’ ideas that women are to be married at a young age are deeply rooted in the culture: my mom got married at 19, my grandmother at 17, and my great grandmother at 16.  The sheer thought of me getting married at any of those ages can’t fully register in my head; it is so incredibly and unbelievably insane.  I don’t even consider myself an adult right now; I couldn’t even fathom stepping into adult hood at any of those ages by walking around a pit of fire seven times.

To be totally honest, I still can’t see myself doing that now or in the future.  Maybe it’s just because I haven’t found the right man, but I have never really picture myself getting married.  I have always been a really independent person; I don’t (or at least try not to) rely on other people for things.  When I do, most of the time I end up regretting it. Growing up, I’ve had crushes, but never envisioned myself in a relationship (that could also be attributed to low self-esteem).  Prior relationships and attempts at relationships have failed because I felt too tied down because of the other person, a feeling I cringe at.

But the thing is, just because I don’t necessarily want or picture myself marrying doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be with someone.  I would like a partner, and definitely want kids, but the whole idea of marriage is still up in the air.  And it’s kind of strange that it is. I’m the product of a good marriage: my parents have been happily (or so it seems) married for 30 years.  The two sets of aunts and uncles that I’m closest to have also been happily married for around the same amount of time.

But outside of this small group, many of the other marriages that I am exposed to are verbally and emotionally abusive, incredibly male dominant, which is everything I do not want.  But it is so prevalent in Indian culture (I say this as if there is a chance of me getting married to an Indian man, HA!  Never say never, though). And despite my exposure to really successful marriages, it is that bad ones that are imprinted on me.  I see my aunts getting abused constantly, being told they are dumb and don’t do anything right, and they just sit there are take it.  And that scares me.

On top of that, with some places saying divorce rates are as high as 50%, it deters me from even wanting to commit myself to someone on paper.  This isn’t to shit on anyone who has gotten a divorce, but I hope that people don’t strive to marry knowing that if it doesn’t work out, there is always divorce.  If I get married, I don’t want to have to go through that. Almost all my friends’ parents are divorced, and some have of “horror” stories of the trauma caused by their parents splitting up.  It saddens me that I am in the minority of my close friends whose parents are still together.

And this is why commitment and marriage scare me.

But, despite my thoughts, the questions will inevitably asked when I come to face all the family and family friends that I haven’t seen in awhile: “Jess, do you have a boyfriend? Jess, when are you getting married?  Your time is coming soon!”  And of course, these questions and statements will disproportionately be asked to the females in attendance , because we are supposed to strive for marriage, and the men have to strive for money, power, and success.  And of course, as a female, my success is based upon whether I marry or not.

Just as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says it happens in her Nigerian African culture, the same females-striving-for-marriage attitude exists in my culture.  They rarely ask me what I want to do with my degree (which I’m glad for), but instead ask about my non-existent partner and our future nuptial.

It irritates me that I as a woman cannot be thought of as independent from a man, when in reality, that is exactly what I am.  But the reverse of this ideology is so normal to society.  I don’t strive for marriage in my life right now, I strive for success and independence.  I strive to be content with myself.  If in the pursuit of these I do find a man to spend the rest of my life with, then I’ll deal with that when the time comes.

But for now, I’m good.