Fantasy vs. Reality

Ok, so my mom called to ask me the usual question, “When do you plan to get married?” for the third time in the week. And for the third time in the week (and the 312th time in the last two years), I replied evasively, “Umm… as soon as I am ready.”
-“Which is, when?”
-“Told you na, I have some things in mind. Once I settle those, then I can think about marriage and stuff.”
-“I am not falling for that again. First there was a job, then there was the second job, and now there is some other nonsense.”
-“So what? You are giving me deadlines now?”
-“No, I am giving you phone numbers and email addresses.”

And of course, the conversation ends there, as I disconnect the call. I miss the old days when we still used landlines and had the luxury of SLAMMING down receivers.

So why don’t I want to get married? Oh come on, of course I do. I am a girl, and the job description of being a girl requires me to be crazy about marriage. And I am not one of those super-ambitious, completely career-oriented, aggressive feminists (I like stereotyping) who are against the whole of mankind. Me, I love men, may be too much. And I love the idea of falling in love with the totally wrong people and being miserable for the rest of my life. So, despite having made my share of mistakes, I still want to be married, eventually…

But what I DO NOT want is a wedding. I positively hate weddings; every bit of them: the preparations, the invitations, the decorations, the thousand gawdy outfits which you will never wear again and the thousand random people whom you will never meet again. Add to that, the dedicated relationship status updates on FB (from ‘single’ to ‘in a relationship’ to ‘engaged’ to ‘married’) all within two months followed by a flurry of albums (‘engagement’, ‘wedding’ and ‘honeymoon’), each of them with over 100 snaps, and you have successfully managed to make me throw up.

If I had my way, I would just land up at a court with the guy, sign a few papers in front of fewer friends, get drunk and spend the rest of my life arguing with my best friend (the aforementioned guy).

So that’s the fantasy...

But the reality will be some fairy-tale wedding with some random person straight out of FB, with some thousand random people celebrating something that doesn’t concern them AND making us pay for the alcohol…

If only happiness was more important than peace. If only…