Some Thoughts on Marriage

Some months ago, two of my closest friends asked me to perform a reading during their wedding ceremony. They asked me to read a piece of my own writing. I struggled with this assignment more than any other work - I needed it to be perfect. But what is perfect? When marriage is not perfect? How do you define marriage when it’s different for every person? I went in circles, finishing the final draft just an hour before the rehearsal. I am proud to share it with you. Reading this at their wedding last weekend was one of the greatest honors of my life. I hope you find meaning somewhere in it, too.

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In an essay I often return to,  Cheryl Strayed references a poem about the lives we haven't lived. In it, she writes:

Every life, “has a sister ship,” one that follows “quite another route” than the one we ended up taking. We want it to be otherwise, but it cannot be: the people we might have been live a different, phantom life than the people we are.

An image of these phantom ships of lives not lived sticks with me. Take a moment - think about who you were ten years ago.

Ten years ago, I was two months shy of twenty, and I was hired to work  at an artisanal deli on Church Street in St Andrews. Matt and I became fast friends: he brought a homemade banoffee pie to my birthday party and invited me to take the train to London to celebrate a proper American Thanksgiving with his family.

We didn’t talk to each other much about what we thought the future would look like, mostly because, I think, we had not a clue. I wish I could ask those two students on the train — what do you think your life will look like in ten years time?