“All that matters is the voices in your head. And writing down exactly what they say.” (Jami Attenberg)

(tea lounge, brooklyn. photo by me.) 

J yelled at me today when I told him I’m starting to freak out about turning 34 in less than six months. It did seem a little crazy after that, but I’m still not really sure about where the freak out is coming from. That’s not totally true. I’m not writing enough and I’m spending too much time comparing myself to other people instead of paying attention to my ball and where it’s going. The truth is that the people I think about all day, every day, do not ever leave, and if they did, I could figure out how to bring them back. So I’m deciding right now not to court the crazy anymore and just write. (I’ll let you know how it goes.)

When I was thirteen, I wrote a novel. It was terrible, but I was extremely loyal to it, instead of self conscious about its quality. I had no sense of risk. I’d write every night for hours and I didn’t edit myself and I didn’t worry about doing everything ever in five hundred words, or if I would be able to make the reader feel what I felt. I just wrote. I saved everything on a floppy disk (see? I’m old) and maybe I even slept well at night.

I am in something, but it feels tight and I’m worried about how to put in flesh and secrets and jewelry and pasts. I have to figure out how to step back and watch and let it grow on its own  and still manage to remain an involved parent. It’s just what needs to happen. I am terrible at trusting the process, but I am in it now.

The Marriage Project, Reflection 54: “We still feel like the same people we were when we got married.”

Liz Frazier is 30, lives in Kentucky, and loves her husband Mike and her dog Pickle.

Why did you decide to get married? 

I got married because my husband wanted to be married to me, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by turning down his proposal. He was drunk, three months into our relationship, after a Bob Dylan concert when he proposed, and I was mad at him for taking a friend instead of me, and he had to call back the next morning to confirm that I had said “yes,” but he had a stronger worry about “forever” than I did. We knew we wanted to spend our lives together early on, and I think that marriage seemed like a way to cement our devotion to each other. Honestly, it was more “we’re in love and this is what people do when they’re in love.”
What did you think marriage would be like?

I will admit that we both had fairy-tale ideas about life, and I’ve been lucky that they mostly have been true for us, but I have relatives and friends who have had the harder side of life, and their lives, in and of themselves, have been filled with rotten apples, broken glass slippers, and beasts who never turned into princes. Because of our friends and family, I should have been more cautious, but I wasn’t and gladly have had no need to be. I know, without a doubt, that my husband loves, appreciates, and respects me. After 11 years together, I still get butterflies.

How do you feel about the word “wife”?

I love it because when my husband refers to me as his “wife,” it is always with a glow of pure happiness. I know that in the real world this is almost a cliche or I could be labelled naive, but it is true. He is still happy that I am his wife, his life partner, his equal, and, as he just said when I asked him, “his cuddle bear.”

Why did you make the decision you made about your name?

I wanted to take his last name because he is the last in his family line and my last name was awkward, but I wanted to keep mine because I am also the last in my family line, so I pushed out my middle name and slid my last name into the middle name slot (where I like it a lot better), and took his last name. We played with names a lot, though. It felt goofy to have him take my last name, and I didn’t want the hassle of a hyphenated name, but this worked for me.

Do you think your relationship with your partner has changed since you got married?

I’m sure it has, but we are the essence of the “little old married couple.” We still feel like the same people we were when we got married. We have our share of life’s problems, but we get through them. As my mother-in-law says, “it’ll all come out in the wash.” For years, I always responded to that by saying, “Yes, but who has to do the washing?” Over time, though, I don’t question it. I have realized that even if we have done our best, we have no control over the outcome of some things. Things will either work out or they won’t, and we have to deal with it. One thing I am grateful for is the fact that we’ve never had a “I’m right, you’re wrong” type of argument.

What have you learned about yourself since you’ve been married?

I bitch, and he listens.