Dear People Who Won't Be Coming To My Handfasting Because of Christian Reasons

(If you read all the way through, you can track the stages of grief. This is raw, this is real, this is almost un-edited what came out of my brain this morning.)

"I dreamed a dream in time gone by...
But the Tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hopes apart

And they turn your dream to shame."

I'm devastated, and so glad I left Christianity when I did. While you may think yourself to be excellent Christlike examples, you have succeeded in pushing me away from ever wanting to associate with that word again. Good work forgetting what Christ actually said, and just keeping up with the Kardashians. Oops I mean modern Christian culture.

I never planned a wedding as a little girl. I was trying to create dreams from leftover sparkles and purple and maybe unicorns, dreams of a ceremony that would perfectly reflect the long arduous journey my life has been to get here and the hope I had for my glorious future with Sean.

I wanted you all to see us promise to give each other all we had of forever.

I found the perfect meaningful thing and started customizing it. I love the beauty of metaphors and layered symbols (if you know me, you should know this). I incorporated them into the ceremony. I started writing individualized poems for my bridesmaids to read at the ceremony that reflected an essential quality of friendship I felt they had represented to me, chose a color to correspond based on chivalric code, and would have had Sean and my hands tied with that color of ribbon, symbolizing what ties our relationship together.

And all I feel now is that it has been unceremoniously ripped from my hands. It's like the dream of the wrong wedding, in Princess Bride, only worse.

The best part is that Sean's incredibly steadfast Christian friend agreed to be his groomsman. Sean's Christian ex-wife will be attending as one of my bridesmaids in a perfect representation of what unconditional love and forgiveness look like. He's better at picking people, I guess.

One by one, my so-called Christian friends are excusing themselves. I guess it's nice, in a way. We won't spend much on this now-tiny celebration. *sarcasm*

Thanks for crushing my dreams. Shame on you. Please unfriend me. I don't want you in the rest of my life if you're going to be that way.

I have Christian friends (who are still attending) who are very confused by the rest of you, and have threatened to pull out their bibles to defend me. (I would like to point out that Jesus prayed for unity among his followers...doesn't seem like a guess as to what he wants.) And then I realized something.

"The important thing for me," I told Sean, "is who comes. To me, the important thing is that I marry you and that my people get a chance to witness your love for me."

But nope. You are just too uncomfortable witnessing a pagan ceremony. You can't support that.

I will respect that, disagree heartily, and be confused. I would always prioritize you over your beliefs. And that, I realized, was the difference. If you wanted me to come to a baptism, or a graduation, or whatever it was, regardless of belief system, I would come. You can come to me and say "hey, this is important to me," and I will try very hard to be there for you (can't be 3 places at once, yet). Why and how you prioritize anything over the people you claim to care deeply for? I don't want to understand. I don't want to ever be like you. I will not let that bitterness in.

And so, out of deep sadness, I will likely cancel it all. Is this an overreaction? No. (Yes? Do I care?) I have had enough rejection from the people who mattered to me most. I was unable to fathom a reason someone wouldn't come. I thought maybe because it was Halloween, and there are those bothered by that day. This ceremony was going to be beautiful and perfect and your God whoever the heaven that is would have liked it and smiled on it and said "this is good" because I am walking out exactly who I was made to be in complete integrity, purity, wholeness.

I wish I was a lesbian so I could get you farther away from loving me. Can you be further than this? Probably not, because you think it's love.

You don't know what love is, go check yourself before you wreck yourself, and I can find other people who will love and accept me even though they disagree. They will nod and say "that's perfectly you" like you all did when I told y'all I wanted a purple wedding dress. No fits, no wild cries about how I was offensive to your religion there, or concerns about my non-traditional wedding. It was so "me!" Well the rest of the ceremony is too, and if you thought I would somehow stop my personal influence at the color of the dress I don't think you know who I am.

And yeah, I picked "handfasting" because it wasn't "wedding," because I wanted to give everyone a heads up that it wasn't going to be traditional so no one got booby trapped into something they were uncomfortable with. So I made the right choice.

I just didn't think so many of you would make the wrong one.

It's nice to know that modern Christian culture and its political fuckery are higher on your priority list than your relationship with me. Maybe that's not what you meant it to be, but I checked your bible. It says NOTHING about not-attending ceremonies of the pagans, or how you should be truly righteous by having nothing to do with them. But hey, we are fulfilling Jesus' prophecy about splitting up families. So I guess he is happy, even though you've ignored what he said was most important AND his personal example on how to live (hanging out with the bad kids, prostitutes, Gentiles, the unpopular ones, AKA no one in the church at the time -- and here you are, unfortunate pharisees, well-intentioned and about to get your perspective kicked in the face by Jesus himself. I'll pray for you.).

I'm not happy, right now. I'm so, incredibly sad right now. But that will pass and I'll be happy I got your wish-it-was-Christian bullshit out of my life.

Moving forward, I will live an awesome life. And you will be disappointingly small-minded, probably arguing on facebook about how bra straps shouldn't be showing.

I have a fiancé who doesn't mind buying the expensive purple exclusive boutique dress I picked out anyway, because it makes me feel like a princess. We will just do something small, and I will invite no one because I have no more family and no more friends. (That one was exaggeration, in case you couldn't tell.) My horse will be the perfect guest because he just will be there because he loves me and doesn't care what I believe.

Why.

Love isn't enough for you, love doesn't overflow and take down walls for you, love doesn't seep from every fiber of your being. I don't know how, but you're doing it wrong. You don't know God, for God is love. And clearly you don't know me enough to love me, just in the first place, because you would have had to know and accept me before you got around to the loving part. And if you knew me, none of this would be surprising.

But it's okay. I know you; I love you. I get you. This is totally scary. It's new and unusual and fear is the automatic first response. I just thought your love would overcome your fear. I forgive you for not being the best of humanity. I will hold open the door of friendship with the passwords of acceptance to guard my heart.


*********
I post this, raw. I don't want to forget the pain and the anger and the wrongness. There is a neat summary on my facebook page, but this is the real deal.

If you're not coming for any bullshit reason? Don't come. Don't talk to me. Unfriend me on facebook now so I never have to bother you again. I will bring you nothing but cognitive dissonance, uncomfortable questions, and probably pain.

Remarks on Death

(written May 18th, a Monday some year in the past decade)

I saw Death today

Written on the face

That boldly spoke truth.

I saw Death today

Riding across the chasm

From that face to me.

I heard Death today

Spoken from a mouth

That voiced understanding

I heard Death today

Ringing through a melody

From that band to me.

I felt Death today

Like a fingernail, sharp and hard,

Scratching Destiny into my heart.

I felt Death today

Sneaking in a window in the back of my mind

Shivers tearing through my being.

I tasted Death today

Like a marshmallow dropped in the ashes

All the sweetness killed by abscence of taste.

I tasted Death today

It's a poisonous cure

That reveals Life before snatching it away.

I smelled Death today

Though it came in whiffs and drafts

That was enough.

I met Death today-

He's not a Halloween costume.

He doesn't carry a scythe.

I met Death today-

You know, it wasn't really that bad

Because I caught glimpses of Life too.

I know Death now.

     You should meet him.

     He makes you think

     About How You should be living

I now know Death

Just like any acquaintance

We greet each other as we pass by

Just like old friends

We never forget the other's name

He brings bleak contrast through

Existence and the lack of -

But this is all false.

Death is not a person.

Death is but a door.

(I looked to see when Monday, May 18th was...and this year was an option...but I am fairly sure I did not write it this year. And yet, when everything blurs together like this...must have been 2009)