05.10.2005 - 11:51 a.m.

You must think I am dead.

I am not dead.

This weekend, I drove home for Mother�s Day with a ring on my finger, a visible sign that I had agreed to leave my family to start another. I gave up the key to that house a long time ago; soon I will leave the name behind, too, and the only remaining connection will be the shape of my eyelids, the inherited asymmetry of my smaller toes.

I am nearly done calling everyone to tell them. I remember, when friends of mine would get engaged, the awkwardness of those conversations. It is like the first viewing of a baby; no matter what my reaction, no matter what the ring or baby looks like or whether my own life is pleasant at all, I must summon a credible exclamation of how pretty it is, followed by congratulations and some additional, thoughtful comment. I have put everyone I know through this same conversation. I have enjoyed it, there is no choice but to enjoy it. I�m just not comfortable about it.

I love my fianc�. I love the ring, and I especially love the idea of spending the rest of my life with him. It is not that. It is that I dislike throwing my news around like candy at a parade. I dislike having gone home to inform my parents that several thousand dollars of their money will be spent on a decision they had no part in, and I dislike knowing that if any of my friends or family thinks I may be making a mistake, I will never hear it. They will lie. Because that�s what I always did, especially if I loved them.

My mother sat me down to talk about what I had in mind for the wedding, our first direct broaching of the subject since I�d called her the night I said yes. I told her the few things I knew�late next summer, simple, my brother playing the viola. Four bridesmaids, or three, in a church. Maybe the one I grew up in. Lots of my new inlaws coming up from Louisiana. I am moving in with him this summer, moving away next year for grad school, for god�s sake walking down the aisle, and I know she has some strong feeling about all of this, but she took it in as if it would be a big version of the birthday parties she used to organize for us as kids. I could not tell what she thought. It did not matter what she thought. I wanted to cry.

I wish I knew the art of changing gracefully; I wish there were a way to let go of the old truths as if they were not grafted in beneath my skin. I feel like I�ve lost control of everything this last month, even though I am only acting on decisions that have been made for years.

Besides all that, my birth certificate is lost in the mail. I applied for a passport for a trip to England this summer, they sent it out, and it never came. I almost expected it to happen�after all, everything else I know is changing, why not the record of my existence, too? Why not? I have come to the absurd conclusion that if I can only get my passport sorted out�get the birth certificate replaced, make an appointment for an expedited passport reissue�then I�ll have an identity. Because right now, I hardly feel real at all.

But I am not dead.

-stonebridge

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