Restless Violets

At the very beginning of the year, London’s sky was filled with fireworks. The annual New Year’s fireworks display that closed out 2023 and welcomed 2024 featured a touching tribute to ten years of same sex marriage in the UK. As the night lit up, my mind was filled with memories of the many times I had longed for such a thing, and I felt fortunate that I was seeing the huge step for society marked in such an important (and colourful) event. 

When I was growing up, the idea of marriage could never quite materialise for me. I wanted it, with all of my heart, but it felt like a dream that could never come true. Nobody knew, but I kept a scrapbook of wedding dresses and flowers under my bed as a child. I’d practise walking down the aisle, alone in my bedroom, biting my lip and digging my sharp nails into the tender flesh of my palms to stop myself picturing a girl waiting on the other side of the room. 

I have often had the feeling that I was born to be a bride.

Such a shame. Born to be a bride but never quite able to make it down the aisle. I could have married a man, I suppose, but the thought filled me with dread. To be tied to someone I could never love, for all of eternity was simply too much to bear, but any other route down the aisle, especially one that ended in a marriage to somebody I could love seemed so far out of reach that I couldn’t even imagine it. 

I was alive when it happened. I am so thankful that I was alive when it happened. There are so many that were lost before the day could come, and I, a silly, self absorbed little girl in the big city got to see it with my own, anxious eyes, years before I was ready, but heart stoppingly beautiful all the same.

At the time, I was deeply in love with the girl who had held my heart captive since we were fourteen, and trying very hard not to be. My Father didn’t approve of my “sickness”, and so, I was doing my very best impression of a heterosexual, in an attempt to win back his love. It didn’t work out, and I’d eventually retire from acting in my late twenties, but as I read that hopeful headline, I began to dream again. 

My immediate priority before that had been to keep up the ruse, and keep my Mother from finding out, in case she reacted similarly to my Daddy Dearest (as it all turns out, she already knew), but upon reading about the changes in the law, I was suddenly lost in a world of possibilities. 

I began looking up weddings again. I fell into fantasies of dresses, cakes as tall as the Blackpool Tower, flowers, vows and honeymoons. I had permission to dream, maybe even permission to feel like a regular person, instead of a monster.

Maybe I could tell my Mother, and she would come to my wedding. Maybe I could tell everybody. I could take out an ad. I could go on the radio and scream about how I felt. I could walk down the aisle, my lips, pretty and painted, no bite marks, no claw marks in the weathered, once tender flesh of my palms.

I could tell her that I was sorry. 

I thought of my girl, and the distance I had created between us, wondering if it could now be more than just moon love. Perhaps, it would grow beyond stolen stares, chaste kisses and furious flurries of frustrated text messages. Perhaps, we could go on a date, to the cinema, or a bar, or to one of those 24 hour wedding chapels in Las Vegas. 

I dreamed my silly dreams, but I wasn’t ready. Part of me knew that, and slowly let the rest of me down gently. I still had a lot to work through, and I had to learn to accept myself, as I was, before I could promise myself to somebody else. 

Over the years, I thought of my own marriage, and I thought of other couples who were finally able to take the next step in their relationship. Hypothetical, happy, hopeful strangers were on constant rotation in my daydreams. I wished them the best, and begged the fates for a time when I would find myself in their shoes, walking down the aisle towards my happy ending, as well as various legal and tax benefits.

I thought of myself, and all of our other brides as normal. Whether they walked down the aisle in flowing, fantastical dresses, snappy, suave suits, or in their dressing gown and slippers. They were normal. Their love was normal. Their weddings were normal. Their marriages were normal. 

That was the resounding message of marriage equality, for me. 

You are equal. 

You are normal. 

There is nothing wrong with you.

So, now, I know that I am normal(ish), the question becomes, am I ready for marriage? 

In the last few years, I’ve reached the point where I think I could at least start the car, and find the church on the sat nav. Will I set off yet? Not quite sure. Might be a bit fashionably late for the drama. Also, won’t get married in a church, because they won’t have me, BUT the car engine is on, and I know where I’m going. 

Most of the time, these days, I think I’d like to get married at sea. I think this can probably be traced back to the many times I watched The Little Mermaid with tired eyes as a child, while my Mum got ready for work and put me to bed. Other wedding venue candidates have been a big park, because it would look, some kind of castle, and some kind of big, ridiculous house that has a bit of a haunted vibe, for the drama. 

The venue is almost narrowed down. I’ve started the car. I have an assortment of dresses that will do because I cannot stand clothes shopping, so now, all that’s left is the girl, and the date. 

It won’t be her. It isn’t her fault, and it isn’t mine, but whenever I think of my wedding (an idea of which I am now very, very wedded to, as you can see), I think of her, because she was my very first bride. She was the reason that I wanted my dream to come true, and now, it is possible. Even better, it is normal.

Perhaps I will plan a million more weddings in my head, each more extravagant and impractical than the last, and while I doubt it will be with her, I do feel that married bliss could one day be mine. Perhaps it will not be perfect, or even really any good, but it will be mine, and the hope of that is enough, for now.