A Witness

I have been thinking a lot about marriage lately. I am watching, and supporting, a huge group of people that are denied the right to marry and want that right more than anything. God, I remember when I felt that way.

It seems like lifetimes ago.

When I was a little girl I was as romantic and hopeful as they come. Then, year after year, heart break after heart break - the devastation over watching the love of my life die and the colossal disappointment of my marriage - I kind of just gave up. Actually, I didn't officially give up until my last serious, long term, relationship - during which marriage was a carrot that I dangled in front of myself and ran after until I was exhausted. I finally put it down and walked away. He then picked it up and dangled it just long enough to get me to follow him into a dark alley where he turned around and stabbed me in the eye with it. I was done.

Two years later, with significant healing and dating time under my belt, I had reached the jaded conclusion that marriage is, indeed, "... like a besieged castle; those who are on the outside wish to get in; and those who are on the inside wish to get out.”

But now as I'm watching my gay friends, with the most beautiful and enviable relationships, fight for the right to marry, my heart is changing and softening. I think. Instead of a stone wrapped in barbed wire, it feels more like a bouquet of new roses that are slowly softening and opening.

I just watched the movie "Shall We Dance?" during which I was struck by a scene where Susan Sarandon says, "[We get married] because we need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet, I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything – the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things. All of it. All the time, every day. You’re saying, “Your life will not go unnoticed, because I will notice it. You’re life will not go un-witnessed, because I will be your witness."

I do think I might still want that after all. A witness to my life. Not the big and loud things - that's what you all are for. I want a witness to the small, intimate, sacred moments that make up my private world. And I want to be that for another human being. Isn't that what we all want? A loving witness to our lives? It doesn't even have to be in the actual marriage package - but, what if it could be? What if marriage really could be a life giving thing? What if we could all, gays and straights, make marriage something new and beautiful?

That possibility really would be something to take to the streets over.