Gray Elbows and a Sudsy Sea

I'm not very young but I'm not very old either. By most standards, I'm still considered young though there are times when I feel much older than I am: when my hearing seems to be fading. This wouldn't be a problem if people learned to speak up. Planks.

But because I'm still considered young, many people (some only slightly older than me) seem to think it is their god-given duty to tell me what to do, in a rather condescending way. I acknowledge and understand that I am not very mature as I tend to joke around a lot but that by no means is an indicator of immaturity. I joke around a lot because I like preserving whatever youth I do have left before my life starts to resemble that Low song Death of a Salesman.

I should point out that these people carry an ingrained bitterness that they would never admit to having. Sometimes, I find it refreshingly surprising to find that there are people more bitter than I am, though I wouldn't say I'm bitter, just more prone to anger.

Very few people are in any sort of position to tell me what to do because not all of them have their shit together. Many are so scattered and fucked up that for them to tell me what to do is downright stupid and infuriating. They're really in no position to tell me what to do because they are barely to keep their shit together. I find it rather bizarre and inappropriate that one of the things they tell me to do is get married. I shall hereafter refer to these people as lemmings. (And yes, I know that I repeated myself in this paragraph)

Marriage, in my opinion, is something that involves an immense level of responsibility and demands a certain amount of maturity. If, according to lemmings, I'm immature (and to some degree irresponsible), then I am not the best candidate to get married. Not to mention the obvious fact(s) that at this point in time I: have no way of making good amount of money, at least not enough for two or more people to live on; can barely take care of myself (according to lemmings), but I disagree as I can cook and clean and am not dumb enough to go looking for life-endangering trouble; and, most obvious of all, I am not in a relationship.

And I'm certainly not going to go out there with the goal of finding someone to marry.

So, if I "can't take care of [myself]", "[am] too immature and childish", and am not in a relationship, how/why can/should I get married? It's like asking a whale to run a marathon. It's not gonna happen.

As for the responsibility portion of that debacle, I know that I wouldn't even be able to handle it. Marriage is more responsibility than I can handle at this point in time and it just isn't for me. Or maybe I'm just stubborn and unwilling to settle down and all that young, angst-y, pseudo-rebellious stuff that is common with people in my age bracket.

I feel compelled to point out that I grew up watching various marriages fail or crumble. This serves as an obvious discouragement from marriage. If they (lemmings) failed at their marriage, why then should I seek it out? I have a lot of problems and marriage isn't going to solve them. Why drag down another person down with me?

I like what a friend of mine once said about marriage. She shared an anecdote about how many members of her family are all pretty fucked up and married. They were married by the time they were her age, and every chance they get they tell her to get married herself and settle down and all that. She mentioned that they are pretty fucked up (though I won't go into why but you can use your imagination), are always fighting, can't get their acts together, etc. So whenever they tell her to get married, she responds with something caustic like "So I can end up as fucked up as you?"

That's pretty badass.

I have to be fair and acknowledge that things are bound to change. I may not feel the same way about this particular topic next year (though I'll probably still detest lemming-talk: "My life is pretty fucked up and I can't do anything right and I'm generally a horrible person and I'm married therefore you, [Gustavo Barba-Roja] should get married! It'll totally make you a happier and wonderful person!"). I may be even more of a catch in a few months. By that same token, I may lose an eyeball next week. At which point, I'll wear an eyepatch.

Oh, and I've only begun to scratch the surface of one side of this matter.