unemployment blows, so does wedding drama

You'd think that with a month of unemployment I'd have found plenty of time to write and ruminate over wedding stuff.  Sure, there's been ruminating but obviously no writing.  It's like my brain completely shuts down when I don't have a job.  I forget how to function.  Whole days go by with very little to show for them.  I get snippy, bored, lazy, and totally lame.

I keep thinking that, hey, it's not like I'm actually getting married any time in the foreseeable future so who needs a frickin' engagement/wedding blog anyway?  But then I think that I need to hold onto this so that I stay focused on that eventual future.  So that I don't fall into a deep, dark cynical whole (which might happen anyway but one must try).  So that I can hash out all this ugly mess that keeps churning away anytime anyone asks me if we've set a date or when I hear that people who've gotten engaged after me will most definitely be getting married before me or when I think about where the money is going to come from to have a wedding that lives up to H's expectations and mine, too, I suppose.

Despite a whole lot of no progress, there has been a fair amount of talking about maybe making progress.  Someday.  It's been really, really, really stupidly difficult to get on the same page about what WE want because we (being H and I as separate people) have different expectations and wants and WE (being the two of us as a unit) haven't really gotten much further than, "We're still getting married, right?  Right.  Good."

So what happens when someone asks us when we're getting married?  H says Spring 2011 - I say Fall 2011.  It's not that I don't want to get married sooner rather than later, because I really wish that I could still say that we're getting married in January and be looking forward to that and looking forward to moving life along.  But we're stuck and it's all waiting on me to find a stable, decent-paying job.  Because until then I am in survival mode just trying to pay the bills, trying to catch a damn break.

With unemployment in mind, there has been an ongoing "who's paying for the wedding" discussion/argument since nearly the beginning.  Lots of resentment - but what's new?  But after lots of tension and difficult talks, it seems clear that the only way we can do this thing is it to do it ourselves.  I really don't feel comfortable asking for money from either set of parents for various reasons, especially as its become more clear that my parents are happy to pick and choose which wedding traditions are essential based on who-knows-what.  I knew I had to give up on them paying for anything when my mother reminded me that my family is totally freaked out that I don't have an engagement ring ("It's a sacrifice he should make for you!") but doesn't want to help pay for the wedding ("Why doesn't his family pay for their guests?").  Serious wedding double standards and I don't want anything to do with that crap.  And his parents?  We've already been through the money-with-strings-attached drama once this year.  I'll pay for my own damn wedding, thanks.

Somehow.

Someone else might ask why we don't just get married.  Clearly, money is an issue but you love each other and want to get hitched so get a $35 marriage license and walk the two blocks to the courthouse and get married already!  Which is all well and good for some folks but for us, that is a total fucking let down.  And I'm beginning to think that making a wedding happen whether it is next month or next year or even a couple of years from now - making that wedding happen is what we need to do to be ready to be married.

'Cause right now I'm a hot mess and for all the living together we've done, we haven't done a whole lot of actual working/functioning together in a particularly meaningful way.  And we're learning that we butt heads when we do and that's got to get straightened out before all this "I Do" stuff happens.

So it still sucks and makes me hate and want to cry when I see other people getting married and I still can't believe that I'll ever be there even though I want to be there so bad.  But there's so much shit to dig through before we get there, so don't rush me.  In the immortal words of Journey - don't stop believin'.