Being THAT Girl

I have another embarssing confession to make. To be honest with you, I myself am actually just now aware of it myself. That's how new this embarassing confession is. Talk about mortifying. It's like looking in the mirror after having dinner with an important dignitary and and noticing that you had lettuce in your teeth since the appetizer or running into an ex and his hot new girlfriend while wearing your "I have my period and I'm bloated" sweats with greasy hair. That's how bad this is.

What is it, you're all asking? Here it goes....













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I am that girl.

You know THAT girl who is obsessed with weddings and has basically planned hers out in every conceivable situation? Yeah. That girl. The one who likes wedding shows and browses through wedding magazines.

You may have noticed this before I did in THIS post. Alas. I'll tell you how I came to that realization. About a year and a half ago, CW and I were on a vacation when he, in a burst of loving effusiveness told me that he wanted to get married a year from that October (that would have been last month). Now, before I sound like a crazy loon, I have to say and I hope that K will back me up on the, that I'm a fairly logical and rational person. I actually balked at this. I was clearly thrilled, but also really f'ing worried. Why? At the time, I just didn't feel like I was mature enough to get married, to look sophisticated in that white dress, to plan a wedding without asking my parents for permission to do x,y, or z thing. I know CW well enough now to know that until he's got all the pieces in a row, he can't act. So I held off being flustered that he wanted to get married in a year and a half (he had planned to propose "sometime in the new year"....being 2009). Instead, on my next business trip, I stopped in a newsstand and picked up a wedding magazine. I felt like I was committing a grave sin picking up a magazine like that without a ring. I didn't want to be THAT girl. But he literally wanted me to plan a wedding in 8 months! A girl has got to know what she likes with less than 8 months to plan a wedding officially, right? Right. Glad you all agree. Before this little adventure, the last time I looked at a wedding magazine was when I was looking for sophisticated inspiration for a prom hair style. I wasn't looking at flowers and centerpieces and DIY invitations and save the dates.

But there I was, early August of 2008, flipping through some bridal magazine, paging down dresses.

Fast forward to the economy crashing and CW jobless, looking for something, anything. What he found was basically a terror and the absolute destruction of the flame of wedding hope I'd turned into a raging bonfire without knowing it. It's like flicking a cigarette out a window only to start a forest fire. When the cops arrest you, you're like wtf I didn't start a forest fire...but there it is, engulfing the Hollywood Hills.

I know I mentioned that chicken recipe that women make to make their men propose in THIS post and how I had something similar with the quilt pattern I was trying to find....but it really goes a lot deeper than that. Weight loss (If I look stunning in this brand new Christmas party dress, he'll be blown away and totally in love with me and propose!); Patience (It'll be our 8 year anniversary of being involved--we took a 3 year break as "friends"--and he'll propose to me); etc. etc. etc. I have all these little gimmicks. Mostly, I use the added incentive of a potential proposal to make me do them (aka weightloss/toning), but sometimes it's those stupid day dreams that I come up with while I'm bored at my desk (aka, today.) The seem totally harmless and I know I've forgotten all of them, or brushed them off, but it's like telling a lie. The more you tell it, the more you believe it yourself.

It doesn't help that over a series of shitty business trips, I amassed a huge collection of wedding magazines (please keep in mind that I HATE flying...this was a great distraction) or that my favorite channel (TLC) has gone from What Not to Wear to "Say Yes to the Dress," among other wedding-y shows. Add to that a large quantity of my friends getting engaged, and close friends with that end in sight. It eventually builds up to the point where it seems weird to NOT have weddings on the brain. What really kills is that due to the length of time that we've been dating (since high school, again....off and on), everyone (especially my family) is expecting a proposal and a wedding soon. Very soon. Even my father made a trip up here to talk to CW, and I'm sure he was expecting CW to be all good and Southern and ask for my hand. That wasn't really what he got. I was actually, stupidly, mad at my father (I did have some reason, but in retrospect, not THAT good of a reason). I should be angry at the situation. At the economy and all those assholes with the subprime mortgages. Go fuckyourselfs. You RUINED my wedding dreams. Now it's all gouche to have a big ritzy wedding. See. There I go again, acting like I have a wedding to plan.

It's not that we don't want to get married, dont' get me wrong, we do, but clearly, with CW hating his job as much as he does and the economy the way it is....etc. etc. etc. my dreams are way on hold.

This all came crashing down when I did the dumb thing and failed to think out how a conversation would go. I've been guilty of this since a child. I hate awkward situations about as much as I hate 2012'ers. Any time I embarassed an adult, I felt so incredible ashamed. For what reason? Who knows. Maybe a double dose of Southern manners. I don't know. But ugh, I hated it. I would actually hide for a few hours before the shame wore off. My parents never came down hard on me, but I would dread a talk about it for hours, days sometimes. Regardless. Ever since then, when I have a serious topic to discuss (i.e. shaving my legs for the first time with my mom), I have planned out basically every single thing a person could say and prepared for it.

I wanted to have a conversation with CW about the location of his next job and how this related to me. Would I be invited along? Would I be consulted? Would he take it or leave if it came with? I had pretty much settled on the idea that the conversation would take, at max, an hour, and that I would basically hear something along the lines of "I'm going to go wherever I can get a job, and I would very much like for you to come with me, even if I have to go first, etc." We live together, afterall.

I won't even go into the shitstorm of that conversation, but suffice to say it took over 4 hours and my wedding dreams are like way on hold until CW gets a new job, gets himself together, makes a few friends and the confidence and happiness fairies pay him a little visit and basically vomit "everything will work out" dust all over him.

And here's where it happened. That gloriously embarssing realization that I am THAT girl. It suddenly struck me, deep in the pit of my stomach, that all those stupid little tricks that I joked about with my friends, the bank account I set aside for 5% of my income (to pay for the wedding....hey, over a year or two that builds up!), the quilt, the wedding magazines I have hidden under the futon....that I was that girl. And it all came crashing down as I sat on our bed, sobbing and laughing. Crying because I was so incredibly embarassed of myself, because everything I had desperately wanted and never really admited to myself were suddenly no where in the near future, and becasue it was funny. Funny because I had tried so hard to not be that girl, but wound up being that girl and it was funny that I had an insane diet and exercise routine and a secret bank account, and stashes of magazines, and Say Yes to the Dress scheduled on my DVR for the next month...and that's fucking funny when life shits on you on a random Sunday afternoon.

Suffice to say, CW feels bad. He doesn't know about any of those secrets, and it'll stay that way probably until we're married one day (see. there I go again.). Because he does want to get married. But unlike so many people today, he doesn't see it as the solution, but as the pinnacle. When we're there, we're there. But I guess we're not there yet.

Time to unschedule Say Yes to the Dress.