Are you married yet?
My laugh sounded a little too loud. It was a piercing melody that whistled from the back of my sinuses and the top of my throat. This laugh sends my tongue to an unfamiliar place, it nestles itself in the lowest part of my mouth to make room for the inauthenticity to escape.
I have perfected this laugh. I’ve been doing it since my final year of college when all of my friends started getting engaged and I did not. I would not.
This laugh filled space in the air that I would have liked to use for what I had to say, but I was neither that brave nor daring.
Before I knew this laugh, there was a time in my life where I thought I would be one of them, engaged and married by 22, functioning smoothly with someone as a unit. I would be with him once I had my degree and we would move in together, letting our lives overlap for the first time in years.
That version of myself and the person I thought I would have that life with are now an unfamiliar memory. Both of them are completely foreign. When I move back in time and try to remember what it felt like to be in my skin or what it was like to touch his, I feel detached. No memory exists of it.
I don’t know if my brain separated from it because I came so close to the danger of losing myself or because I missed out on something my primal self longed for.
Sometimes, I think about what would have happened if I went down that path with him, the one that did not involve me realizing my dreams. I try to unravel the little questions, would we have kids I did not want, would I be anything like I am today, would I be ashamed to call myself a feminist, and then, I hear that nasally laugh of mine echoing in my headspace. It stops the thought right in its tracks. It saves me.
Going down that rabbit hole is dangerous. No joy lives there, just fear. I have come close to ruining my life lots of times by choosing the easy path, the easy habit, the easy person, and each time I have narrowly escaped.
When you ask me if I’m married yet I could tell you all of this, the whole story, the scary details of a life spent gambling with joy, but I won’t. I will allow my laugh to answer you instead. Yes, it is awkward and unpleasant to hear but far more savory than any comment I have to make on the matter.