Marriage

How do we choose the ones we spend the rest of our lives with? People read through their vows but to sit and contemplate each word should be enough to overwhelm any one of us. The profoundness of each promise, each commitment. In a world full of lives each so unique, both in similarities and differences. Each so temporary, and yet their ripples permanent. How does one, with their own talents and abilities, their own weaknesses and deficiencies; how does one select one, and only one, and find contentment? Is it resignation, defeat, acceptance, realism? What is the nature of marriage? Is it when we see the worst of ourselves in a mirror and satisfy our adventurous desires by being grateful that someone should love us despite ourselves? Is it something to pity? Our most pathetic moment? Standing outside it feels weak. Standing at an altar I see them ruled by fear irrespective of the words they so robotically repeat and the customs they so dutifully observe. A celebration of none other than the deterioration of a beautiful mirage from this point forward. Lies all told with such conviction and belief. We happily delude ourselves into believing we are good men. Good women. Good husbands and wives. Everything about a lifetime of love cries to me of defeat. A fear of death. Our attempts at immortality. And yet I recall when I was at deaths door, and wanted no more than to lose myself in one heart, feel one vessel, kiss her lips alone. I recall when I forsook all the stars in the night sky for an apparition. When nothing felt more real. It was I then, that was defeated, for I longed not for what was mine, but peering through a window at shadows, of all I dreamed you to be.