on being a wife

It took me thirty years, but I finally convinced a rather handsome man that I'm the best he can do. And it took a lot less effort than you might think. All you have to do is keep all your worst traits locked in a dark cellar until he's lulled into a false sense of security. 

I know what you're thinking. I'd rather have someone love me for me. That's unrealistic.  Think of all the things you do when no one's looking. Actually, think of what you look like when you get up in the middle of the night to pee. That person staring you in the mirror through one squinty eye is who you really are. That's the person who relishes the splat of pus from a popped zit, whose pubic hair sometimes pokes through her spandex capris because she refuses to wear underwear to yoga, and who has maybe once called in sick because Barneys was having a sale. Is that the kind of person you imagined committing a lifetime to? 

I can hear you saying, "But that's what love isssss. It's accepting another person in all their unsavory glory. It's unconditional." No, that's what parenting is. Romantic love is a much more fickle and fragile being. It requires constant maintenance. It needs patience, understanding, seduction, a good sense of humor—and bathroom doors. 

Thank god once you're married you can leave all that behind. You can stop holding your stomach in. You can lay spread-eagled on the couch watching The Mindy Project. You can suck Cheetos dust off your fingers with an enthusiasm you used to reserve for...erm, popsicles, and then wipe your spit-soaked hand on the sweatpants you've been wearing all weekend. Or worse. Because now you have a legal contract that creates an administrative nightmare should your partner decide he can't take the smell of your armpits for one more day. 

But if you're lucky, the basically perfect human being you're married to makes you want to be better than the creature that shuffles around in the middle of the night cursing at the furniture for being in its path to the toilet. That's a nice thought, isn't it? 

Of course, we've only been married for three weeks. There's still time to let myself go. 

boys

The first boy to ever enter my orbit wore sweat suits and smelled like Play-Doh. I noticed him because he was climbing up the slide of our classroom jungle gym ignoring our teacher’s wild threats of a timeout if he didn’t come down immediately. In all my four years, I had never seen a creature so terrifying. I spent the next six months following him around recess, hoping he’d notice my dress. I think he finally did when we were juniors in high school.

In the years in between, other boys caught my eye and broke my heart without ever acknowledging my existence. This is probably because just as they were beginning to realize that girls were more than just playground targets, I blossomed into a gawky adolescent with mild-to-moderate acne and crooked teeth.

My early teen years felt long and unkind, but eventually I grew into my limbs and learned of the sorcery of salicylic acid. The day I got my braces off, I swanned out of the orthodontist’s office thinking finally—finally—I would be in the pretty camp. Then I got home, looked in the mirror, and cried.

I had straight teeth, but my nose still had a monopoly on the middle of my face and my hair was doing its weird frizzy-cowlick-y thing that wasn’t particularly flattering. I’m not sure what kind of power I thought braces possessed, but I marched right out to the living room and told my parents they had been ripped off. No one was ever going to like me. And surely that’s what they’d paid all that money for.

“No one” is of course an exaggeration. I had a lot of friends, just no suitors. I was tired of being appreciated for my sharp tongue and good grades. Intelligence be damned, I wanted to be liked for my looks. So, I sought out guys who seemed like they might go for my brand of awkward splendor. Unfortunately, American high schools are not heaving with teenage boys who are quite so evolved. The pickings were slim.

That was okay with me. I only needed one all-consuming crush. Adam was it: tall and gangly, with a ridiculous laugh and his own set of braces. Upon meeting him for the first time, I thought he is me as a boy and promptly fell in love. But girls adored me as a boy. A mouth full of metal and a little flamboyance are but speed bumps when the boy in question is funny and popular. Adam was both of those things in spades.

It was only the fact that he was a year younger than me that made him seem less intimidating. My friends talked to his friends. He wrote his phone number on the back of his school picture like it was his business card, and had one of his teammates give it to me after a soccer game. I pretended that wasn’t a disturbing gesture and called him the very next day. Thus began the two most humiliating years of my romantic life.

Adam and I made out in empty stairwells at school and in his basement. (This makes him sound like my Jordan Catalano. Picture less brooding and more pastels.) We passed notes and I drove him home. But we were never officially a couple. I just happened to be available when he wasn’t parading down the halls with girls who wore Abercrombie & Fitch. With every khaki-clad snub, I would halfheartedly listen to my girlfriends lecture me on how guys are supposed to treat you, thinking if I were prettier, he would like me more.

Now, when I look at old high school photos, I want to leap into them and shake the skinny girl with slumped shoulders. Sure, there were a couple of awkward years, but they probably built character. Once the braces came off and my acne cleared up, I was alright. But I couldn’t see it at all. My self-worth was too wrapped up in how attractive I was to other people. Specifically, to the boys I liked.

Once in awhile, a memory of Adam slinks into my mind and I think about all the things I should have said. Like the time he asked me to drive some circuitous route out of the school parking lot so no one would see us leaving together. It would have hurt me less if he’d physically punched me, but I whispered “okay” and did what he asked. In my fantasy, I stop the car, walk around to the passenger side, open his door, tell him to get out (calmly, but using many expletives) and never speak to him again.

My dad is fond of saying, “We teach people how to treat us.” I’ve never liked hearing it, but it’s true in that way parental offerings often, annoyingly, are. I let Adam walk all over me because I didn’t think I deserved any better. At 16, I didn’t have the gumption to say, “Hey, you can’t treat me like that.” I was too concerned with making him like me. Turns out, you can’t make anyone like you.  

It didn’t occur to me until my early 20s that what mattered most was if I liked me—and not just how I looked, but who I was. To my own astonishment, I actually did. (Most of the time, anyway.) That realization changed everything. It’s made me choose better partners. To care less what other people think of me. And to stand up for myself.

I can’t go back in time and stop my teenage self from wasting the hours I spent consumed with insecurity, certain that if only I were different or better in some way my life would be easier. She wouldn’t listen to me anyway. But I hope someday I can pass this wisdom onto a daughter of my own, who I pray, if she listens to nothing else, will never call a guy who writes his phone number on the back of a tiny photo of himself.