Bittersweet

That's right, Internet, I'm getting married. The WTBf asked on Father's Day during a beautiful toast about the wonderful love and values and people our families have given us. I'm supremely happy about getting to make it official, to build a life that is wholly our own, to belong to one another. That part of this is exquisite happiness and a great sort of relief to be becoming more autonomous as a unit, rather than as myself against the world.

I don't really want to plan a wedding. I've done enough wedding planning already for friends, and I have no precious illusions about what this means and how much it costs. People are already telling me what I can't do, when I can't do it, and not taking polite but firm refusals. My mother was asking me about officiants within an hour of the thing, pushing me at a Christian wedding with one of her minister brothers leading it. I don't know if it was that conversation or if something else happened, but they figured out that I'm a Pagan. Maybe my office smelled too much like incense. Maybe the altar looked more altar-y than I had thought. I don't know.

I got asked about it outright today, and it was bad. Worse than I'd ever expected because it came up when I had already spent hours having an anxiety attack. Not the best time for clarity, calm, or diplomacy when negotiating such a sticky issue. My mother thinks the vows being Christian are somehow tied to eternal salvation. I'm almost certain that she is unhappy about us getting married, and that hurts more deeply than anything she has ever done or said to me. More than the shitstorm on the way, thanks to them digging up the truth.

I had promised myself that I'd be honest about any of the things I hide if asked about them outright. I was. When anything but a particular flavor of Christianity is seen as a wrong move by me (but not necessarily the adherents), you know things won't go well that flavor is very officially Not Christian. I'm not sure if it makes it better or worse that I work with Jesus and that I still worship the Christian God as part of what I do. (Hey, it's what I was raised with, and it's a powerful, instinctual thing.) I do believe I am now in the "loved, but deemed unacceptable" category with my family. I'm not the first to go through this, won't be the last. We didn't even touch witchcraft, and it's not any of their damn business. Needless to say, this hurts a lot.

There are so many wonderful things going on right now, so many things I'm learning and doing and working on - all of which would be more interesting than this clusterfuck. I'll get back to those and back to the bittersweet task of getting to plan a wedding that's less stealthily pagan.