Slow Down

All week this week per head costs, shower dates, stationery designs and linen colors have been like bouncing balls in my head and suddenly they all just stopped. I was proofing next week's Bridespot and WHAM, I thought to myself, "What is all this stuff? This fog of flowers, satin, and pointy shoes! How did I get here?" I used to be the girl that said all you need is love, and now I'm just as bad as those Brides I hate. The Brides who steamroll their fiances or bully their family into over spending. Only it's crazier, I'm not even a Bride. My friend Michael says I feel for people more than anyone he knows, and for the first time I really see what he means. Because I'm so blessed to have friends I love who let me help them register or dress shop, my mind gets churning, and I run away with myself. I forget what the marriage is really about. So tonight I'm slowing down.

Today I've decided, I need to stop making grand predictions. I used to think I could see it, when a couple had "it," when they were going to make it. But lately I've seen couples I would have bet my life on fail, because of lies, distrust, health disasters, other people in their way, yet until the very end they looked perfect. They looked happy. They had it all--a perfect home, friends who got along, people to support them, (seemingly) love, but it didn't work. As a single girl I occasionally ask myself, will "this" happen for me? This being the dream guy. This being the beautiful big day. This being the big break up you never see coming. I wonder do those people with the unhappy ending, do they know where it all went awry? Can they look back and say, "There! That's where the train derailed"? Or is it just as mysterious when you're in it as it is to the onlookers?

When the bouncing stopped tonight I was reading that a Bride's greatest triumph was marrying the man she loved, the man of her dreams (not getting her dress for a steal or finding a photographer for under 4 grand). So often our relationships, romantic or otherwise, are less and less about the people we love. The relationships become about the fog. Tonight I've come through the Brigadoon, the spotlight is back where it belongs. It's on the love.