“Salina was really happy for you,” Don said in response to
seeing the status updates in my Facebook broadcasting the news that I had
restricted to a select few before performing the action.
“Salina was?”, I was confused why Don was telling me that
his wife was really happy for me, not him.
‘Yeah, well I was too, we just always thought you were one
of those guys that would never get together with anyone, that you would stay single well into your
forties and maybe forever. You just
don’t really seem like the settling down type.”
I didn’t take any offense to this statement. In fact it may be a statement that I would
expect from many. I heard that my
sisters stated similar sentiments to some friends of mine when questioned
whether I was marrying Maui a month or so before I proposed. It’s been almost three months to the day now
since proposing and I have turned into the hugest lump of corny just like sorry
love-struck teenage girls all around the world.
I can’t help it. I really am
helplessly and foolishly in love and I don’t care what anyone has to say about
it… except my friends and coworkers.
Around them I pretend that nothing has changed, like there aren't billions of butterflies and rainbows circling around me and the birds aren't chirping for me while I skip around with my basket and hood (I'm not sure why I'm Sleeping Beauty here but oh well). I’m not embarrassed
or anything; I just don’t like the idea
that I am becoming an old lame-o like those I made fun of all these years, and
still do sometimes. There is a math equation that explains everything. I’m still
uncovering the ideology behind my math so I can't provide ALL the details but I do know for certain that the complex reasoning system exists and that it has been pulling these
strings the past decade or so, perhaps longer, leading me to life decisions
that sometimes appear to be, or actually are, opposite of my character.
I used to say that my greatest fear was mediocrity. That wasn’t accurate. I think what I was defining as mediocre at
that time was the “American Dream”. The
American Dream isn’t always “mediocre” though.
There are people excelling at things that I could never even imagine
possible and reaching heights far beyond anything I will ever reach, and I’m
fine with that. What I am not fine with
is being lame. If I made millions of
dollars perfecting a recipe for ketchup that was so much tastier than the
competitions and then if I went home in my Jag to shag my model wife and end up producing
offspring that attend Ivy league schools, that’s pretty damn exceptional and
not mediocre at all. But if, as I was producing
these results, most of my days were spent working a ton, going home and doing
the same thing day in and day out and living the text book life that we were
sold to strive for without the fun and the color that I define as life, then I would
be truly living my greatest fear; a life more ordinary.
My greatest fear isn’t marriage and kids, it’s the idea of
living a life I would not want to read about.
I’m not scared of “settling down”, I’m scared of being bored with life, of feeling as though I didn’t take enough chances, of not seeing and
experiencing enough of the world, of being “typical”. I’m scared of the living death. People fear the zombie apocalypse as though it
is something that will come one day as an epidemic devouring all of
humanity. That fear is upon us and it
has been for decades now. Instead of
changing the marketing campaign and offering advice that would actually help the
zombies seeking a cure, the doctors prescribe “medicine” that infects them
more. We’re sold fear of the unknown, fear of
change and differences in opinion. We
treat people living certain ways outside of the accepted mores of society as
though they are lepers and apply labels to all of the boxes we fit people in. My fear is to be in one of those boxes, affixed with a certain label. It’s
a fear I fight every day while confronting some of the life changes that
typically lead to undeath.
My fight against zombiedom hasn’t been intentional. I make my decisions the only way I know how,
with my gut. I take all the big life
decisions that I am confronted with and I imagine the realities that would
follow after the decision is made. If
the reality seems like something I like and would want to read about; if it stirs some type of excitement
inside me, then I go for it. If it doesn’t, I
don’t. When confronted with options,
there is often the “safe” option and the dangerous one. Whether the danger comes from an emotional
limb that would be stood on or just a nervous moment that would be encountered,
or maybe some slight physical harm, it’s usually the way I go… unless I don’t like the results I see. I’ve never driven a motorcycle because I see
death down that path. No matter how many
times I imagine me on a bike, it always ends in death.
Despite the danger a motorcycle brings to my world, death isn’t
something I am ready to confront yet. In the same vein, the normalcy that threatens
my future through the act of marriage seems “safe”, but I like the story that has already been created and I like future that
I see.
I’ve been asked more than once what has led me to pursue
marriage at this point in time and I haven’t given any accurate answer. I know that people have questions because it
seemed to come out of nowhere. Maui and
I have not been dating for years. We hadn’t
met each others' family before I proposed. We hadn’t
even lived in the same state as each other in years. We have been friends for a long time but we just become close friends in the past two years or so. Plus we were both coming out of terrible relationships. So
I understand people’s concerns. To me, this
is a pretty complicated and personal question for people to ask so flippantly,
yet everyone seems to ask. What it comes
down to for me, was that I liked the future that I saw and I liked our “story”. It’s really that simple. I like our past and I like our future
prospects.
I know that beyond this there are many other things at
play. There are all of these calculations
in my brain that add up the pieces of each other and form perfect shapes and
beautifully constructed integers. The answers to these equations guide my visions of our future and lead me to revel in
the unlikely events that brought us together.
The math is all there but I don’t pay much attention to the 0s and 1s, I trust in the computer’s ability to provide the correct output.
So I admit to all of you now, that as I feign normalcy there
is actually a whirlwind circling around in my belly that is love. I may, on occasion, zombie out a bit. I can’t say that I won’t. And maybe one day I will completely transform
but that day has not come yet. Maui and I are fighting
the horde and the disease that causes undeath together. I’m her
*Rick O’Connel and she is my Evelyn Carnahan and we are going to
continue fighting the mummies (it’s not that great a leap from zombies to mummies
but if you cannot just go along with this analogy then add “and zombies” after
the word mummies… jerk) together as we travel the world discovering exciting new plot twists around every corner. Or maybe just, just maybe continuing to live a life, at least a little, less ordinary.
*See 1919's version of "The Mummy"
