i am the wedding grinch

He's perfect. I don't deserve him.

We have dipped our toes into wedding planning. And then we sat down on the edge of the pool and gazed at each other for awhile. We got engaged three months ago. You'd think we'd be further along than having a shared Google doc entitled "wedding." 

I keep telling myself things like, "Everyone moves at their own pace!," "What's the rush?!," "We want something unconventional anyway!," but inertia is a dangerous thing. Have you seen The Four-Year Engagement? In spite of its adorable San Francisco finale, I don't want that to be to us. 

Yet, I feel like I'm supposed to take the reins because I'm the lady. Ladies are supposed to be mega into this shit. The 40 billion dollars that the wedding industry rakes in every year suggests that at least one party is pretty jazzed about centerpieces. Why isn't it me? 

My fear is that my inability to muster enthusiasm for wedding planning means something. That it represents some kind of feminine failure. Worse, that it means I won't be a good wife. If i can't even make a guest list, how are we going to file joint taxes? That doesn't even make sense.  

I think my problem is this: society still stuffs down our throats the notion that a woman has three major life moments - her engagement, her wedding, the birth of her babies. I might have just made those up. My point is, these are built up to be the greatest days of our lives, but what if you're sort of "meh" about that list? That's how I feel. I don't want to be told when I'm supposed to be peaking. I also don't want to ruin all the days up to THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE preparing for it. And what if it turns out not to be the greatest day of your life? Well, I guess you might as well just kill yourself. 

I don't need that kind of pressure. I need a stiff drink.  

behave yourself

Discovering a word that exquisitely captures one of your greatest flaws is extremely liberating. At worst, it encourages you to continue on your self-defeating path because it's gratifying to see yourself in the dictionary. At best, it provides solace, proving that you are not alone in your neuroses. Which, again, sort of makes you shrug your shoulders and think, oh why bother? 

Akrasia is a word derived from an ancient greek term meaning weakness of will. More elegantly and accurately put, it is "a perplexing tendency to know what we should do combined with a persistent reluctance to actually do it." That is me all over, and it's probably you, too. 

Philosophers as early as Plato and modern psychologists have tried to explain why we often do X when we know and believe Y to be better. It seems the best anyone's come up with is that we act on conflicting motivations. In other words, reason and logic are but mathematical equations we choose to ignore.  

The whole world is X-ing when we should be Y-ing, and the worst part is that we know it. We're well aware of our nonsensical X-ing, yet we carry on. It's fascinating. 

I have no lesson to offer here, but doesn't it make you feel just a tiny bit better to know there's a nice Greek word to blame for at least one of your shortcomings?   

things i have lied about

To say that I never lie would be, well, a lie. I just save them for special occasions. Not because I'm especially virtuous, but because I always assume I'll be caught. It's probably because from as early as I can remember, whenever I told a lie, my mom knew instantly.

One thing you should know about my mom: the woman makes Sherlock look like he runs a detective agency for babies. I'm not sure if she actually has super powers or she secretly works for the FBI, but it's scary what she can unearth with barely a squinted-eye glance in your direction. Maybe it's a mom thing. 

When I started 4th grade, I decided I was ready to shave my legs. She disagreed. I understand now why she said no (because what kind of demonic Lolita needs to shave her legs at nine?!), but at the time I thought she was being completely unreasonable. So I did what any clever child of divorce would do. I shaved my legs at my dad's house and wore pants at my mom's. Boom. Flawless plan. 

She sniffed me out in less than a week. 

I guess the fact that I'd stopped bugging the shit out of her with gym class sob stories and coupons for Nair set off her Spidey sense, because she got me one Sunday night when my dad dropped me off. She didn't even wait for him to leave. She just casually brushed her hand against my leg as he put me down from a hug. 

"Did you shave your legs?," she asked

"What?! No!"

"Then what happened to your leg hair?"

"You know, that is a good question."

"Don't you dare lie to me."

"I'm not!"

My dad was not at all prepared for this. I still let him pick me up for hugs, for god's sake. That I'd wanted to shave my legs was shocking news to him. And now I was a liar. It took them approximately 30 seconds to agree on my punishment. I would have no friends or phone for a week and I'd write them each a letter of apology on why it was wrong to lie. I found out it had to be a two unique letters when I tried to get my dad to drive me to the library so I could photocopy the first one. They ran a tight ship. 

However, I might note that I did get to keep shaving my legs. They said it was because, "We weren't punishing you for shaving your legs. It was that you lied about it." That lesson has stuck with me ever since. Okay, not ever since. It took awhile to sink in, but as I grew up, I got it. The lie magnifies the crime. Even now that I live 3000 miles away, I think of those letters I had to write when I'm tempted to bend the truth a little.

Of course, I still sometimes make up unnecessarily elaborate excuses for why I'm unavailable because it hurts people's feelings to say you'd rather read than hang out with them. Though I think this gets into some sticky white lie territory. Or maybe I'm acting out.