“OK. I hear you.” That’s all he said, because he has literally nothing to say, ever, like all men.
Maybe I was buying myself some time. Maybe I knew by then that our former selves had stowed away on the plane with us, and I didn’t want his self-doubting former self proposing to my hormonal, ugly, resentful former self. I didn’t want him to ask me to marry him with a question mark in his voice, asking not just “Will you marry me?” but also, “Is this a stupid idea?” and “Am I good enough for you?” and “Are you good enough for me, or are you actually completely terrible?”
I wanted him to be sure, because I wasn’t. I wasn’t sure if I was good enough for him or for myself or for marriage. I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend forever with anyone, least of all myself. But I was very, very sure, at that particular moment on our trip, that nothing would ever make me happy. I was sure that I would drag him down into hell with me.
I wasn’t wrong about that. Because when we arrived at our hotel north of Valencia, we finally broke into a giant fight — about how tedious and repugnant he insisted on being, maybe, or about choosing the wrong hotel or about something even smaller, who knows? (You can fight with an overpacked bag about anything under the sun, trust me). And I yelled at my perfect future husband. I yelled at him in my bad sleep shorts, with my tangled, ugly hair on my hideous head, and as I yelled I thought, “This will release me from this purgatorial entanglement! I’m free! I am disgusting and I deserve to be alone forever!” My future husband stormed out. Success!
He returned a half-hour later. He sat next to me on the bed, where I was reading. He was apologetic, which was helpful and yet also unattractive. Then he spoke. “There was a jewelry festival of some kind downstairs —” and he started to reach into his pocket.
This time I didn’t just yell. “NO!” I shrieked. “I told you I didn’t want this!” I wailed like someone about to jump off a cruise ship and drown in the salty terrible sea. I screeched like a woman smothering all of her former selves under an avalanche of self-loathing. I howled like a woman murdering the best thing that had ever happened to her, ruining the absolute best relationship with the kindest, most patient, most defensive, most exasperating, most handsome, most hideous man she had ever met. I bellowed and sobbed and snotted into my pillow, in my bad sleep shorts, in my bad hair, and my future husband yelled back, telling me I was terrible, finally admitting that I was awful, awful and unlovable, things I knew all along but wanted to hear out loud, and in English.
My disappointing future husband sat in the bathroom of our disappointing hotel room on a disappointing stretch of Spanish coastline for about 20 minutes. Then he came out. He did not show me the (probably disappointingly bad) ring he’d bought. We talked in ragged tones about what was happening to us. I cried. He sulked. We talked some more. We cuddled ambivalently on the uncomfortable mattress of the bad bed in the bad room, hating ourselves and each other, hating Spain and Europe and the whole planet and the inky black void beyond it.