Things Like This Don’t Happen to People Like Me

Now, you may find this impossible to believe, but I really don’t cry all that often. By and large, there are only three things that can make me, or anyone, for that matter, cry: joy, despondency, or a chemical imbalance. Overall, my life of late has lacked in all three, hence the lack of waterworks.

Yet there I was, sobbing behind the wheel of a car parked in the tiny lot of the Little White Wedding Chapel, sitting next to my second husband as of ten minutes. 

Elvis had just insincerely wished us luck on the way to his SUV, as Elvises who marry people are contractually obligated to do — he hadn’t officiated my wedding, our wedding, mostly because it would have required a surcharge (it was hard enough to agree to the additional amount it cost to do it in the actual chapel and not outside on the lawn, where it was 112 degrees but $25 cheaper. “Fuck it,” I said, “you only get married twice”) and he was the kind of guy who only makes eye contact with the man when addressing a soon-to-be bride and groom. You’d think someone whose job ostensibly is to make brides feel like a queen for a day would also be capable of treating them like human beings, but what the fuck do I know?

While I teared up during the ceremony, the SSRIs still did their job. The post-vow gravity of the act I had just committed was too intense, however, for only 185.5 minuscule milligrams of Effexor to counteract. I felt overwhelmed by a tide of gratefulness, the same tide I had written about in a letter to my now-husband a month prior:

I am in love and my love is reciprocated and it is sickening, by which I mean to say it quite literally makes me feel ill. The nausea is a pit, a hole — an infinite well of desire, consuming me entirely in vacuous, velveteen blackness. I do not know what to do with this feeling so I do nothing; I let it overtake me, pulling me down like an undercurrent. I know that only a fool would paddle against this undertow of knowingness, of seeingness, and so I ride, body slack, propelled to points unknown.

Anthony asked why I was sobbing. I stared at the steering wheel, then up at him. “Because things like this don’t happen to people like me,” I replied. 

I am used to “nevertheless persisting,” continuing to exist mostly out of spite, despite what I’d like you to believe are insurmountable odds. Every slight, every grievance, every setback, I hate but I love; they pain me but please me, because they reinforce my worldview, that being I am a hopeless, perennial, loser. People like me wear their bitterness, their world weariness, like a badge of honor — we have bravely fought in the only war that matters, the literal war of the world, and not only do we have the scars to prove it, we’re proud of them. We would never rub Vitamin E on them in an attempt to make them fade because that’s what cowards, what people who care about keeping up appearances, do. Cowards tell themselves they’re in love when really they’re just terrified to be alone. Cowards believe they need someone else to be complete. Cowards get married. 

This, of course, is a lie I’ve told myself for the purposes of self preservation, mostly bred from the fact that my first marriage was, quite literally, bred from cowardice; I know I was a kid when I did it, my mind uncooked enough to still be malleable, but it still stings. I harp on the guy all the fucking time, but really I’m just upset with myself. 

I had treated marriage so flippantly, so worthlessly, the idea of committing it again but in earnest seemed an impossibility. So, too, did the idea of being found (not finding, being found) by someone who is so enamored by me, the real me, to even propose such a thing in earnest. 

But then, well, it happened, in spite of it all. I could not ignore it, could not fight it, could not minimize it. I had no choice but to accept the rarity, the impossibility, of being found by someone who says they were searching for me, and only me, and believing them. I had no choice but to accept the fact that I was wrong. And so, I told myself, if you’re wrong, prove it — not to anyone else, but to yourself. 

Given the circumstances, it felt flippant to call him my boyfriend. Husband is the only state of being we have that imparts the gravity and certainty of our specific situation, so the deed needed to be done. It’s like how we struggle to come up with a word more applicable, less trite, for how we feel than “love,” but we can’t — it’s all we have, and so here we are. 

And so here I am, wrong, and here I am, married. Less than a week ago, my husband and I flew to Tennessee to watch a friend of his get married but for real, by which I mean to say traditionally, surrounded by family and friends and all that garbage. 

Side Note: I didn’t immediately tell my mother I had gotten married, because our relationship isn’t like that; when I finally did, though, I made sure to remind her that she didn’t immediately tell me when she, too, had gotten second married. “Fair,” she noted. 

I was renting a car at the airport when the call came in that my presence was required back in Los Angeles immediately, because a role I assumed I’d never get, because things like that never happen to people like me, was mine. 

And so I immediately took a 7AM flight back in order to play a character that is, essentially, me, but if I had never developed the skills to accept that I am not the be-all, end-all, of knowledge and experience — me, but if I were still stuck in the prison of rigidity. Things like this don’t happen to people like me. Yet here they were, happening. 

Too exhausted to sleep, I instantly missed my husband so much I watched his sitcom appearances on the in-flight television. The fact that said sitcom appeared in the “new releases” section made doing so effortless. 

Side Note: The other day, someone referred to my husband as my partner and I said “Oh, you don’t have to call him my partner — we’re in a heteronormative relationship, he’s my husband” and this is true, I loathe the co-opting of the word “partner” by cis white fucks named, like, David and Cassandra. You’re not living in a southern state where sodomy is illegal in the ‘70s, you’re working in tech in the 2020s. Let the queers have SOMETHING you haven’t completely corrupted, Christ. 

The woman next to me, intrigued by my seat’s silent tableau, put the same program on her in-flight television so I could see my husband in duplicate, with a slight delay. This was helpful because I had already mentally cataloged the scenes he was in. I could tell my looking (well, staring) at her television bothered her slightly, but I couldn’t help it, I was in awe. I was watching my husband on a screen, on a plane, which was being piloted to a destination in which I, too, would appear in something people may one day watch on planes. Things like this don’t happen to people like me. 

Were I to lean over and tell my seat partner I was married to the man she was watching on her in-flight television, she’d think I was insane. I’m not saying I’m not insane, just that mental illness is hereditary so I take two pills a day in order to lessen the amount of Koester in my blood so when I lean over and tell you that’s my husband on the in flight television, you should know I’m not suffering a psychotic break, I am telling you the truth, woman who brought a soiled pillow onto the flight. 

Let the record show I do not enjoy telling you this, in much the same way I did not post copious photos of my marriage on Instagram or immediately tweet “got the gig! #setlife” when I, y’know, found out that someone believes in me so thoroughly they trust me to not fuck up their, y’know, fucking movie. Telling you this feels gross, braggadocious, like your friend informing you about how great his career is going immediately after you’ve reminded him you’re about to be 40 and still on food stamps. 

I am telling you this because you are my friend, and because maybe things like this don’t happen to people like you, either. I just want you to know that they can. I know, I can’t believe it too. But I have to.