Lots of Weddings

A few weeks ago I started a new, very part time job working as a server for a restaurant/catering business. I only work one or two evenings a week helping set up, serve, and take down the food for an event. So far, all of the events have been weddings.

I have taken this in stride. For the most part, I don’t get emotional. There is usually one moment – a song, a toast, joyous laughter, something – that stirs inside me. It often causes me to think of my own wedding, or something I loved from my marriage. It’s a longing for something I once had. It’s part of my grief. But it’s not debilitating – I am able to move through it.

I also recently learned of another wedding. Apparently, less than two months after my divorce finalized, X and the twatwaffle got married. I don’t know any details. I don’t want to.

Here’s what I do know. X told me, as he ran out the door and left me to pick up the pieces, that he “didn’t want marriage.” Eight months later, he is again married. So I am reminded yet again that a lot of what he said was a lie. I also know that this marriage is a sign something isn’t right with him. It’s not that I’m not struggling with feelings of inadequacy. I am. But my knowledge that this whole messed up situation is really about him, not me, is stronger.

The best part of it is that it’s another way I feel myself separating and letting go a bit. While the news was certainly a gut punch, my overall feeling is just sadness. Sadness for the man he is choosing to be. Sadness that I really didn’t know the man I was married to. Sadness for his friends and family who are, at least some of them, so disgusted and hurt. It’s an awful lot of destruction in his wake. But I realized that I am really starting to see this as something outside of me. I feel more of an observer than in the thick of it. I feel myself moving away from his drama. I’m healing and I can see it happening.

Last night I worked a very fancy wedding. I worked almost non-stop for over twelve hours (it was intense). But I did a lot of thinking as I cleared tables and watched people dance. And I noticed I didn’t feel cynical about the idea of marriage. I may not ever get married again, but I am open to the possibility. X may have shattered my life, but he didn’t break the optimism in me.