I Felt Trapped, Confused, Absurdly Young.
After student teaching, which was a disaster that ended well, I got a job as a teaching assistant at a Head Start preschool. I played with the kids and tied their shoes and served their lunches while the lead teacher did all the teaching.
When that preschool lost its funding, we teachers lost our jobs. I landed at a daycare, where I fell in love with all the kids and tried hard to be helpful. When my “help” included mentioning to a parent that her four-year-old might have ADHD, I was fired. (In my defense, the parent asked what I thought.)
So in May of 1992, I was unemployed again. I stayed up all night playing solitaire on my new computer. As a side profession, I created resumes for sober friends and found out (the hard way) to never accept personal checks.
I was still with Paul, blaming myself for anything I did imperfectly in our relationship.
I met a guy named Gary who, unlike Paul, was willing to stay up all night and talk on the phone. Every night we discussed philosophy and books and deep, meaningful stuff until the wee hours of the morning.
Meanwhile in spite of my lack of employment, Paul and I started looking at engagement rings. Kitty had been dragged back and forth between apartments for long enough; we were talking about making it legal. While Gary and I discussed existentialism and the meaning of life, Paul and I discussed taxes and houses and shared retirement accounts.
At the jeweler I found rings I liked, and Paul found rings he liked. The last ring I’d worn was a giant steel skull ring, so I liked silver and non-traditional. Paul liked traditional gold.
I groaned as Paul held a stupidly large diamond with a very traditional setting. “You’d get used to it,” he told me, unflinching. Paul handed it back to the jeweler and we left, unable to agree on what I might actually want to wear on my hand for my life.
Appearances mattered most to Paul.
“What about wedding rings?” he asked later as we sat on his couch talking, as we’d done so often for almost three years.
“What about them?”
“Well you wouldn’t just be wearing an engagement ring,” he said. “We’d need to find matching wedding rings, too, and our wedding rings would need to match the engagement ring.”
“Can you wear a silver wedding ring?” I asked, still stumped about the process. He hadn’t yet proposed.
Paul grunted. “It wouldn’t be my first choice.”
I stared at the wall. Paul sat silently.
“Are you ready for a wedding?” he asked. “Do you think you’re ready to be married?”
I thought about my job, my minimal sobriety, my general immaturity. I thought about Gary and our late night phone calls, about playing video games all night, about summers off as a teacher, about vacations and unemployment and commitments.
I felt trapped, confused, absurdly young, like a princess randomly tossing aside a crown.
“Actually,” I ventured, “I don’t think I’m ready for marriage yet.”
The statement just popped out and landed in front of me with a thud.
Paul didn’t miss a beat. “I think that’s the only time you’ve been honest about that,” he said.
We sat in silence for a long time.
Finally Paul said, “I don’t know what we’re doing then.”
I thought I would marry him at some later date, when I was more prepared.
But I said, “Do you think we should break up?” I couldn’t make that momentous decision alone.
“I guess so,” he said.