A Glance Forward
There I stood next to my betrothed, crookedly smiling as I normally did when I did not know how to express the simplest of emotions. She was laced in a white dress, while I let a frumpy suit drape down my body. This was the beginning of the rest of our lives, or so I was told.
The invitation sold it as a matrimony of our love, but I could not get past an apparent lack of air-conditioning in the church, how was I supposed to think about loving someone forever amidst a pervasive must in the air. It was truly unbearable, and a sign of unbearable things to ensue. Caught up in my inability to breathe some sort of air that was not tainted by someone’s perspiration, I started thinking about getting married at a Walmart, they always have air-conditioning blowing over there. As I began to accept the heat my eyes moved over to Jesus on the cross. Did they really have no better picture of Jesus? Must they use the one of him on the cross? I would be shocked if I went to a funeral and saw a picture of the deceased in the same position they passed away.
My eyes looked around everywhere except towards my fiancée, but I noticed her gaze was fixated on me, so I quickly glanced at her, and decided it was an appropriate time to make some small talk.
“Hey, do you come here often?”
Unamused she responded, “Why do you do things like this?” Now, this was not the first time she had said something like this, but like any small comment that came my way, I decided to seriously think about it in a larger context. Why did I do the things that I did? It bothered me a little, but the priest cut my airtime as he began the proceedings.
He went through his spiel about why we all congregated to this church on this specific day, he claimed it was the power of love, but I thought the powers of societal pressure were slightly stronger than love. Nevertheless, he made his rounds, and eventually began speaking to us about this special bond we would share for the rest of our lives. It felt all too sentimental and I responded poorly to sentimentality. However, he said something that stuck with me:
“This will be the happiest day of your lives.”
“Wait a minute,” I responded.
My fiancée glared at me with a concerned expression etched on her face. I could see one of her relative’s gleam with excitement at the prospect of this blowing up.
“Is everything okay?” Asked the priest.
“Well,” I replied, “You said this will be the happiest day of our lives. I don’t really know how I feel about that.”
“How do you mean?”
“I guess I do not appreciate the peak of my happiness being limited to this particular day. I just do not understand why I cannot be happier tomorrow than I was today. It seems a little unreasonable to me that today has to be the happiest day of my life.”
Tired of hearing me speak and rightfully so, my fiancée interjected, “Why are you saying these things right now? Do you not want to marry me?” That was simply not the case, I had no problem with the idea of being married to her, I just did not like the idea that my happiness would be on steady decline from this point on. Unfortunately, I also did not phrase that as well I would have liked to.
“No,” I said, “I do want to marry you! I just don’t want to be unhappy, and the priest clearly said we won’t be happier than this moment right now. I don’t know about you, but I am not the happiest right now, it’s hot, it smells awful in here, and Jesus just keeps hanging there. Do they seriously not have a more flattering image of him?”
“So, you think marrying me will make you unhappy?” She said.
“Not necessarily, I just don’t want to be limited. What if I happened to win the lottery tomorrow? Do you think we wouldn’t be happier than this day right now? I mean I would be pretty happy to win the lottery right now,” I continued. At this point I do wish I had stopped and reconciled things, but that is not in my nature, so I went on describing scenarios where I would be happy. Fresh on my mind, I mentioned how I would enjoy being at a Walmart, and in that exact moment I saw my fiancée physically twitch.
Everything that proceeded was extremely deserving, she took off her ring and tossed it across the church where it hit my grandmother, and immediately after, the ring boy took it and put it in his pocket. There went a month of my salary in the pocket of some four-year old boy, not someone’s pockets I can go rummaging through, so I accepted the fact that I had lost the ring, but I tried my hardest to get my fiancée back. I ran outside and chased her.
I yelled, I cried, and I wailed, “I’ll be miserable with you! I swear I’m never really that happy anyway. Please!”