Love and marriage, love and marriage, goes together like a...

I love this book I'm reading by Elizabeth Gilbert called Committed. she basically does all the hard work for you when it comes to scoping out marriage, giving it a hard and long investigation (research and all), from every angle, every facet. and in doing so, wondrously unravels precious gems of unconventional wisdom that are decades more refined and tried than the mere two and a half ones i've been privy to. i'll take that, thank you very much. as an almost 26 year old coming-of-age woman (wow, woman), i am precisely in gilbert's shoes. wanting to find matrimony with that one single person (and not of the short-term wedded bliss variety, either) and to find true love, true compatibility with another human being. i've understood and lived the realities of failed expectations. i've experienced the setbacks of love, exploring harsh realities (in my suitors, to be clear) early on in my adulthood such as incarceration, mental illness, instability, depression, post-traumatic stress, possible infidelity and unmentionable compulsions to certain tendencies and predilections. in this process, i've uncovered a lot of who i am, in that i tend to attract the guys with the brooding good looks, but an additional caseload of drama and vitally tragic circumstance.

so dear liz, as i affectionately call her, boils it down for me, all the facts, all the inglorious and unromantic things one would prefer to glance over when they meet a person, because, as her dear felipe (as a jewel merchant) expounds, we are so blinded by the gemstones in a person that we tend to over-look the entire parcel that comes in a shipment, ones which may very likely contain a whole load of irreconcilable crap. and so it has been with me, the girl who meets boy and then goes love-blind, gaga like lady gaga, so wrapped up in my glorious halo of soaring butterfly wings and titillating ruminations that i insist, to myself, in some stupor-like funk, that this is looove. when in fact, it's infatuation, and the olympic games of love triages and pullings of heart-strings have just begun. truly. time after countless time with me, i've met these strangers, poured my heart empty, thinking they would find my sincerity, my passion, my soulfulness as whimsical, refreshing, even endearing, coming to find out i shoveled out the loot so fast, they could hardly swallow, much less taste the valuable and priceless parts of me. and in doing so, i found myself, at the end of a very short yellow brick road, with fissures and cracks in my heart once again, disenchanted with love, men, and the possibility of finding true and meaningful companionship with the opposite mate.

well, gilbert says that in her explorations of love and marriage, she decided that honesty was the best policy and quite literally broke it down for her husband-to-be. rather than feather and fluff all the good stuff (that people unwittingly do in unencumbered pre-marital bliss), she decides to enumerate a list all of the character and personality flaws and potential things things that her betrothed is sure to run headlong into. sounds romantic, eh? ohh, think of the list that could add up! "Honey, I have psoriasis." "Sweetheart, i snore louder than a pack of wildebeests at the heyday of deep winter slumber." "Babycakes, I have a predilection for S&M bondage and expect you to take full role in carrying out my deep-seated fantasies."

Such things should probably be discussed before we do the jig down the aisle. and while i am all for self-restraint (come on, some things you've just got to keep on the temporary DL!) i also love the brutal self-inflicting honesty; it's sheer brilliant. why package ourselves into versions of something we're really just not and then begin the downward descent into woeful disappointment? wouldn't you rather adopt that fine old mantra and just "save (most of) the best for last"?

look, im not saying that we should go around with a post-it note on our foreheads saying, "Look at me. I am a loser. I have hairy toes. I carry a tire around my waist. And I am an over-compulsive spender whose dream job is laying away on gilligan's island smoking a pack of marlboros." that would surely not work. can you imagine the scene? it would surely send our species into immediate extinction. but rather than paint glossy images of ourselves on a canvas where the sun always shines and butterflies and daisies abound, how bout we just keep it real? how bout we practice a little self-deprecation (there's a difference between self-deprecation and self-loathing, by the way) and humility instead, eh? and i'm talking about it from the perspective of marital prospectiveness here. fall in love, by all means, but do it gently, slowly and with the cranial cavities somehow wedged into the mix rather than being sold by just the sizzle and not the whole daggone steak! you've got to be practical, sometimes. falling in love, if done foolishly, is equivalent to falling smack-down into a pile of concrete. love should never be employed in the same sentence as "eat dirt", my dear.

so gilbert has inspired me. rather than sit and wait for the incipient list of provincial do-wrongs and unforgiving grievances to appear, i plunge head first, feet second and offer up my heady list of misdemeanors and potential deal-breakers:

1. being the gemini that i am (or silly girl), i tend to be very flighty and have a hard time finishing the shit i get started. prone to dreaming up ideas and visions, i seldom carry to term these nascent ideas, and this bleeds into vital aspects of my personal life, im afraid: lack of follow-through, despite the best of intentions.

2. a wild temper when inflamed. now, if i converted all the jalepenos and spicy what-have-you's consumed over a lifetime into subatomic energy, you'd have an atomic bomb waiting to take out the entire human race. meaning, spicy may be a bit of an understatement with me, literally and metaphorically. i'm korean. we suffer fits of explosion and then we get over it. if you're patient enough to suffer a 5 minute scream-a-thon (my family sometimes practices this in the car, windows closed, all of us firing off expletives and roars strong enough to shoot missiles from 20 feet away), then, well, you just may be the one. or jesus christ himself.

3. i am a selfish. i like things to be done MY way and this may come across as bossy and domineering. really, the thing is, if i managed to meet a man who wasn't so overcome by his own napolean complex and need to exercise his manly machismo with full authority, you'd see that i mellow out. quick. in fact, you could easily parlay this no-nonsense, my-way-or-the-highway into a meek, agreeable little purring kitten. ok, maybe meek is not the word, but most definitely, compromising.

4. i buy waaay too much shit online. wait, i buy way too much shit period. now my debt is really quite manageable, and according to suze oreman, of the healthy variety (hah! as if you could convert debt into spinach and foie gras fillets and organic endives). that means a bit of college debt and a minimal amount of credit card debt somewhere in the low 3 digits. but i like stuff and money is not that important to me. meaning, my philosophy is rather laisezz faire when it comes to the 'chedda'- it comes and goes but it will never rule my life or send me into a tail-spin. life is too short to be controlled by the stuff.

5. i curse a good amount. in fact, profanity is a bit of a sport for me. for instance, how many ways can you creatively say the word "fuck" in a sentence? don't let me get started.

6. i sometimes forget to brush my teeth when i get really tired. i don't shave my legs in the winter (really, i could care less). i'm a bit of a feminist (treat me as your equal or ELSE) but somewhat contradictory to that, find chivalry and gentlemanly-ness to be really sexy. i burp out loud. a lot. umm, let's see, what else. i tell really lame jokes; wait, i really don't have jokes. i like reality tv (and if i still had cable, would probably have E!, Vh1 and MTV on constant rotation) and sometimes read shit like US weekly (god, my most embarrassing confession of all). I'm a bit messy; I throw my towels on chairs rather than hang them up like a good girl and you'll often find my bed unmade- oh the thought!

7. i can be narcissistic; i like attention just as much as i have an aversion to it- you'll find that i'm deeply contradictory and paradoxical. i am sensitive, emotional, opinionated, and bitingly honest. I am, in fact, quite the COMPLEX woman.

And there pretty much goes it...feel free to add to the list (call to all exes, i repeat, open casting call to all exes-NOT) if you'd like. not bad, a bucket list of 7 items (well, let's count #6 as just one) that might very well tend to throw a pursuer off my course. and i'd rather you know now, than find out years later, spent and bitter. (Who's still willing to hang?) In enumerating my less than pretty character traits (and then broadcasting them for the world to see, no less), i realize i am neglecting all the juicy and brilliant bits of my ever-expanding and multi-faceted self, qualities and such things that may quite defy the laws of gravity and empty yourself of all the aforementioned lines above (hah- there goes my entitled sense of narcissism!). but the point is, that's neither here nor there, and i'm certainly not going to sell you on it. you'll just have to find out for yourself.

because, quite simply, like i mentioned before, i'd really rather just save the best for last. ;)