with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors
I intended on making this newsletter public but it ended up being more intimate than I originally planned so it’s remaining unpublished on my Substack web page and if you’re receiving this email, you’re in luck!
I’m getting married on April 4-5 and I have a lot of thoughts milling through my head so I thought I’d share them here.
My parents are acting kind of weird right now, even by their standards. I’m getting married at the Four Seasons, and while I was more than okay with a less extravagant venue, my parents weren’t. I think their reasons are varied, and if I’m being honest, they might not even realize what those reasons are. My parents’ own marriage was turbulent to say the least their families disapproved to the extent my mom’s brother didn’t even come to the wedding. It’s been 30 years since they got married and everything’s been (supposedly) patched up, but I think my parents want to stunt on the haters, some of whom will be attending my wedding, so to speak. My parents succeeded and thrived despite the insane amounts of skepticism and our own trials and tribulations as a family, and that they’re comfortably able to get their beloved only daughter married at the Four Seasons in a haute couture Vivienne Westwood dress.
We are hosting an Indian welcome party on April 4, and I will likely be wearing a yellow saree for it. I’m genuinely excited to see all our friends in their Indian outfits because in a sense, this intermingling of cultures is the very definition of community. That said, this cultural aspect of the wedding isn’t without its frustrations. We have a few family members who refuse to even try the food offered by the venue even though it meets their specific dietary restrictions, and I understand people have their idiosyncrasies but like, I’m a very picky eater, and have the palette of a toddler but when I attend events, I don’t demand my hosts bring me external food. I just find this behavior really impolite and I don’t want to be an imposition but apparently some people don’t have the same consideration even as adults.
One of my favorite pieces of writing is Jacob Clifton’s reviews of Seasons 1-2 of Gossip Girl (2007) that appeared on the now defunct Television Without Pity. In his review of season 2, episode 13 of the show, “O Brother, Where Bart Thou?”, Clifton writes,
Funerals put ritual and scripture and song and tradition between us and death; they are necessary because if we were allowed to feel loss unmediated by these things—if we mourned in our own way, off book and with no one watching—we would start screaming and never stop. Watch.
In a sense, a wedding is a funeral turned on its end. While a funeral is a ritual of collective grief, I’ve come to realize that a wedding is a ritual of collective love. I firmly believe that if you want your wedding to only be about the couple getting married, just have a civil ceremony. If you’re making it a point to host a wedding, even a small one (ours was only about 60-70 guests), it’s a community event and from birth to death, there are very few events besides weddings and funerals where our entire community gathers to pay their respects, celebrate a union, and mourn.
It would surprise my 19-year-old self but I haven’t really written at length about the inner workings my relationship with Dylan, who I’m marrying in 49 days, apart from text messages to my friends and offhand tweets or posts on my blog. Earlier today, I told my friend that when Dylan and I planned on meeting up, romance was not remotely on the table (at least on my end but he wore a watch to impress me that I didn’t even notice). My friend asked me why I initially liked Dylan despite us seemingly having nothing in common besides posting excessively on politics!Twitter, and like, his being a 22-year-old Drake superfan. Ultimately, the reason I kissed him that night isn’t because he’s handsome (although I think he is), it’s because he listened to me, and more importantly, made me feel like I was worth listening to. It took us a while to hash our relationship out1, but it worked out for the best, and we now have our baby Esther the cat who sleeps in between us at night, tucked in under the comforter. I even make him moodboards semi-regularly! (See below)
For most of my life, I believed I was too pointy in the Anne Boleyn way; I was once told to my face by a guy on my floor that I was like 6-credit PhD course you drop during add-drop period because I was beautiful and fascinating but ultimately wasn’t worth the effort. I never thought anybody would want to have kids with me, so the fact I’m getting married to someone who wants me to be the mother of his children, even knowing the dark and twisty parts of who I am, is somewhat overwhelming. I’ve always grappled with my own mortality, but I’ve come to regard it as the utmost of privileges that I will age beyond my beauty, and now I can finally imagine a life worth living.
Finally, here is one of my and Dylan’s engagement pictures on a beach in Seattle.
For example, while we were mutually blocked on Twitter during the summer of 2022 (long story), I wrote Dylan an email informing him that I loved him, and set up a tracker so I could see every time he opened it (he got to 54 before I stopped checking). He reacted by obsessively quoting it on his alt for months and months and convincing himself that I had hatched an elaborate plot to humiliate him because the alternative, believing that I truly loved him, was terrifying.