one. single. uno.

I got married last night.

Oh, I guess I should specify this was a dream. Although, my brother Josh says that whenever I get married again, I’m probably gonna just go off and do it in secret and then tell my family about it right before asking to please pass the butter, like it ain’t no thang.

I don’t think that will probably be the case. Mostly because we don’t really say things like “please pass the butter” in my family. But, who knows? Perhaps he’s right. I’m the kind of person who likes to celebrate beautiful things with loved ones, though, so I’d be surprised. I also don’t mind wearing a beautiful dress from time to time.

Anyway.

In this dream, I married a stranger. Just married him. I remember looking at him with this overwhelming sense of WHAT HAVE I DONE??? And pretending that I was happy, all the while. Basically, the dream was terrifying. A nightmare. See, I don’t want to marry a stranger. Which means it’s probably time to deactivate my profile on mail-orderbrides.com, huh?

It’s a glorious feeling to wakeup from a nightmare and realize that none of it actually happened. That you’re free and well and look! you don’t have to marry any person ever, if you don’t want to. Certainly not a stranger. Certainly not a liar. And certainly not anyone anytime soon.

And you know what? There are some good things about being single. Truly. Somebody I don’t know too well told me otherwise the other day, actually. “Oh, being single SUCKS!” she said, like she was discussing the bubonic plague or something.

And it can suck, sure. Or it can be fun, if you choose it to be.

It’s way better to be single than to be with someone who hurts you more than takes care of your heart. And I had the thought the other day that I should go back out to LA soon to visit Latshaw-west. And guess what? That’s totally doable. I can just go. That’s not so easy when you’re not single. Or married to someone who eats up all your money like it’s food and his hunger is a bottomless pit so there’s no funds to buy plane tickets to go see your family. Uh, just hypothesizing.

Also, it’s a little bit fun to get to know people all over again. It’s hard to explain, but since I’ve been single, I’ve made some friends whom I never would have had the opportunity to become close to, had I still been with someone. And this is a gift that is just lovely.

And, I talked to a concert pianist the other day. “When you’re going through hard times, you produce and practice like no other season in your life,” she told me. “And when I got a boyfriend in college, I got all happy and stopped creating for a time.”

So there. I’ve made a lot of things that I wouldn’t have made had I a). not gone through a hellish season and b). not been single. This is a special time. It’s quiet and evocative. It’s late nights with the candle burning on both ends. It’s a fire inside that won’t be quenched until you sing about it. And it’s not totally content, this time; which is why I keep asking questions and why I keep making stuff, I guess.

But it’s good and special, for sure.