Everyone is getting married! Everywhere I look, someone is getting engaged. It's epidemic. And it bothers me. It bothers me because in all instances but one (Katie and Larry) I think it's an attempt at an economic fix. And I think that the state of our economy is a result of careless, maniacal behavior and the fix is an outdated, patriarchal value that's being forced on a society that has already fought this battle, has already won this war and is being bumped back to square one, like a game from the 70's called Life. Revenge. Go back to the start.
What exactly do they think will change? You can't just do the same thing over and over and over again and expect the outcome to be better. Marrying for security doesn't work. Security is a very individual commodity. We need to be able to stand alone. Only when that happens can we prosper together. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't lean on each other or have some sort of symbiosis. I'm saying that if one life completely depends on another, the result is something less than ideal. I now pronounce you Parasite and Host. It's not a marriage. It's a disease.
Now is the time when we should be commiting to someone because we have examined our dreams and have come to conclusions about what we want from life, and have found the person who fits perfectly into that picture. Ironically, now is also the time when those ideals may be hardest to come by. Women recognise themselves as human-not toy. We want to be respected as capable, intellegent equals, in control of our bodies and reproductive processes. Frankly, we don't want to be told what to do. We want to take care and to be taken care of. We want to be weak at some things and strong at others. In other words, we want to be human. Same thing we want from a man. We don't want gods or fathers. We don't want macho. We want true-the exact opposite of what parents have been teaching their sons. We want it to change. And society wants us to settle; the thought being that things were better when men were men and women were women. Except that that was a lie and it wasn't better. And it didn't work. It would be stupid to go back to an archaic square one, like a game of the 70's called Life. People aren't supposed to travel backward, and in most cases except one, it seems like my betrothed aquaintences are throwing in the towel, not lifting up their wings. It's kind of hard to look at them and wish congratulations when what I really want to say is, "I'm sorry." And that's what I am, if truth be told, I'm sorry. And those are words that you just can't say but if they read my mind, I'm sorry.
