how I got married on friday

I am an eye. I open, and I see everything. I close, and I am safe. My eyelashes are angels wings, they cover me.

I went away, I went up high. I looked out through the black sky and saw the tiny lights of another whole country. I looked out and saw myself. I was myself.

I came back, and I saw all the dust that had fallen into my eye, blocked my light, caused me pain. The dust was from another time. It was not part of this one. I said good-bye to it, I made my needs clear.

Then Paddy and I stood before each other in the same place we exchanged rings eleven years ago. We left those rings behind, traded old vows for new, and marked ourselves, in pain, with a ring that can never be taken off. Our new vows were etched into our skin, in a band of belonging. We belong to each other.

And how we will treat each other in this new now is quite different to how we treated each other before.

There will be no taking for granted, no leaning on each other for things we can do for ourselves, no more suffocating each other with our insecurities, no more silence that only makes temporary peace.  No, we are speaking for ourselves now, standing on our own two feet, side by side to face the world. We will be each other’s greatest champion, we will watch each other soar.

Those rings we wore the first time, they were easy to attain. We booked the church, got dressed in our finest. We paraded each other around like we had won a great prize, thinking finally I must be worth something. But the finery was only skin deep. Underneath our wounds were gushing. No ring could bandage them.

The marks we wear now were not so easy. They are spoils of war, the treasures hidden in darkness. They are not pretty, they do not shine. But they are our most valuable possession, worth more than all the gold and silver in the world.