There is a first

for everything I guess. This wedding that I did not attend this weekend made me think of another one. I was the one doing the marrying there. I had a beautiful pink dress; my fake sister Elisabeth told me and my future husband that a bride is not supposed to spend the night before the wedding with her futue one, so I stayed in my parents' flat that night. The stripe of the dress broke and I was upset, but in the end we managed to go and get married. By most accounts -- that is Elisabeth's and my friend Marta's -- I looked sad. The way I felt was not sad. Just unreal. I kept watching myself, as an outsider, walking up to the mayor, saying those words that needed to be said. I walked out with my father on my side (apparently an acquaintance of his who saw us that day thought that I was his new bride, only two years after my mother's death) and went home for the lunch. I felt awkward but I thought that was natural. I also felt an intense need to go to the bathroom all the time, which was strage but I did not make much of it: all brides are anxious, I thought. By the time we did our party at night I was fine. Happy and cheerful, looking forward to the honeymoon in the Maldives, even having the energy and time to get jealous about some little girl jumping all over my my ex-husband, whom I knew he had had an affair with while he was with his previous girlfriend. And that was that. All my friends thought I looked amazing. Happy. Liberated. And I was. Loving him was pure bliss in a way and yet the marriage was a disaster. First chance I got I went looking for something else; something better maybe. Once we started living together it became clear that it was not "meant to be," much less meant to last longer than the year we actually spent together in heartache and drama. I don't regret any of it, however. It showed me that I was able to feel. That I was able to be honest and loving, if only for a minute.

Tonight, five years later, I am in a different situation. For the first time, someone told me he did not want me. The explanations are almost irrelevant, except that they had to do mostly with his inability to see a blissful future, embodied by the "ultimate goal" that is marriage. I am hurt and upset and, of course, had to confide in the first person that came my way (after the bouncer at the bar called KARMA (ain't that funny?), where I went to have a drink on my own) - the taxi driver. He was Pakistani and had an arranged marriage two years ago. He had never met his wife before they got married and he has not been living with her since. But - he told me - he was sure that it was going to work out when she was going to come here to join him because it had to. There were no other options, he said. It didn't matter if she was smart or beautiful or interesting; that was that and that's all there is to it. I am -- apparently -- beautiful and smart and interesting, but it just wasn't going to work out. So it had to be ended, he said. I am, as said, hurt and upset. Is it because it is the first time I was rejected like that? Is it an ego thing? Is it because - for the first time - I felt like I was willing to give it a chance and be open and loving and it backfired? Is it because I think that "what goes around comes around," as the cab driver said and even though I was expecting it to happen all these years, I could not contemplate it actually happening? Or is it because I thought, for a minute, that the reason is that I was too much into schtooping (yiddish for f*cking)? I could not tell in this drunken haze that I am in. But then I thought about another thing that the cab driver told me: the story of the man who is told that he has to pick the most beautiful flower in the garden and he keeps picking one after another because he cannot decide; only to end up with no flowers at all for the rest of his life. Maybe that is what happened. And though I don't think of myself as the most beautiful flower ever, I think that I am a pretty freakin' attractive bunch. One that's worth nurturing.