Misspent Youth

this is a total, feeling sorry for myself/i’ve wasted my life post. so if you don’t want to read my whining, don’t click the link. also, the reason i’m able to write really long posts is because i type 100wpm. i’m totally not kidding. anyway…

i just now found out that my sister got engaged and i’m very happy for her. she’s been dating Zac for 6 years now, and he’s pretty much part of the family anyway. and he’s cool–he and i have Star Wars and Xbox in common. he really is a nice guy, especially compared to some of the jerks she’s dated in the past.

Brian and i are going to their place on Saturday so Lesley can do our taxes. now that we no longer talk to our mother, the task has fallen to Lesley. they’re both accountants. anyway, i’ll see the ring then.

leave it to me to feel like crap. this is so messed up thinking, i know, and although i’m really excited for my sister, it just underscores how much of a loser i feel that i am. it makes me wonder what my life would be like now if i hadn’t wasted my 20s being…wasted. if i had only gone straight to college after high school, like most people i know.

my sister didn’t, but she has a professional job and has been making a livable salary for years now. she owns a condo, for Christ’s sake.

me? i don’t know that i’ll ever be able to own a home because i have student loans out the wazoo. my sister’s company paid her tuition.

maybe i’d have a career, a family–kids, a house. it seems like most people my age have all that. most of my friends do.

Brian once told me that it comes down to choices. i made the choice to go to grad school instead of going out in the work force right after college; whereas, my sister has worked for her company since she was 18 or 19 while going to school. and i know there’s no way i would have survived working in a corporate environment. i tried that before–it didn’t work.

don’t get me wrong–i’m not unhappy with my marriage, but i admit that i’m not happy with my own personal situation. my parents always measured success by how much money you make, and that was always drilled into my skull. their views have changed since i was a kid, but mine haven’t. not completely. i always feel like i haven’t lived up to expectations. my parents’. my own.

i was a smart kid, in the gifted program, and all that. i wasn’t “supposed” to turn into a drunken, coked up, stoned, promiscuous party girl. so all that behavior was caused by bipolarness, and now that i’m aware of it and in treatment, i wouldn’t do those things now. but big fucking deal. it still doesn’t give me back the years that i spent trying to feel anything but what i really felt inside.

i knew, subconsciously, that i was miserable and had no idea why. i wasn’t comfortable with those feelings, which is why i got wasted all the time–so i wouldn’t have to feel them. i suppose that’s what’s meant by the phrase “comfortably numb.” and i wonder why i have such a hard time sleeping. back then, i never slept–i passed out. or maybe i had trouble sleeping back then, too, which is why i got that wasted.

what does this have to do with my sister? nothing. like i said, it just makes me think about my own life. the thing is, Lesley is 8 years younger than me. sure, i get a kick out of it when people meet us and ask who’s older. but because of that age difference i feel like i should have owned a condo first, etc.

the only reason i got married the first time (Brian’s my second husband) was because my mom was married at 22 and had me right before she turned 23. when i turned 23, i had no prospects in sight. we were celebrating my birthday at my parents’ house and one of my uncles told me that Lesley would probably get married before i did. that threw me into a panic, so i ended up marrying Jay (my first husband), who even though we met in high school and had mutual friends, weren’t close except for the 3 months prior to our “wedding.”

and that’s what brings me to the beginning. Jay and i eloped because i knew, i knew that if we had a wedding my mother would run the show. i wanted to avoid that at all costs. the only reason we had rings was because they were passed down to us from Jay’s parents–who were divorced.

when Brian and i got married, well, we knew we’d get married eventually. but at the time, my student health insurance was about to expire, i was only adjuncting, and my medication cost upwards of $500/mo. that didn’t even include doctor and therapy visits, or visits to the ENT doc. i had surgery and hospitalizations.

so we decided to get married. it wasn’t romantic. it was practical. i mentioned this briefly in a recent post. anyway, we got married at City Hall, in jeans and T-shirts, which was fine with me. there was no way i was going to wear a big, frilly gown to grungy, old City Hall. aside from Brian and me, the wedding party consisted of my mother, Lesley, and Zac. my dad had already moved to Vegas, my brother was in the military, and we didn’t give anyone enough notice so Brian’s folks couldn’t drive in from Iowa.

so there we were, 5 people, and my mother still ran the show. i mean, down to telling me how i should hold the bouquet for our pictures. it was so awful that i was trying really hard not to cry and wiped away tears as soon as i felt them pooling in my eyelids. it was absolutely disgusting.

at the frickin’ restaurant, she asked the waitress to take our picture. to anyone looking at the picture, if they didn’t know better, they’d think it was Mother’s Day or my mother’s birthday. i can’t even look at it without wanting to throw up.

so we had no wedding, no reception, no rings. with my anxiety levels, i wouldn’t want to go through all that stress. the rings aren’t that big a deal to me–i’d be afraid of losing them. but because all of the girls i knew growing up, and all of the women i worked with when i tried to fit in to corporate culture made such a huge deal about THE RING whenever someone got engaged, i sometimes feel like i’m missing something. i also know that it would be superficial on my part.

growing up i always thought i’d have a traditional wedding, just like all girls in real life and in fairy tales. i had no idea that my life would go in the direction that it did. neither i, nor any of my friends, would have pegged me as the one most likely to end up in a psych ward.

bah. that’s enough for now.