Somebody lied when they said turning 18 makes you an adult because I am deadass trying to figure this whole thing out at 26. Starting a career, having your own place, and getting married all seem like essential tasks on the "How To Be An Adult" checklist, and two out of three ain't bad.
While bridesmaids and flowers and all of the wedding things are wildly enticing to me, I can't make a conscious decision to settle for a man that isn't right for me just to say I settled down and, after years of being in a marriage that she felt was no longer fruitful, Chrisette Michele feels the same way. In an intimate letter on her blog, Chrisette Michele's World, the singer opened up about how she got married for all the wrong reasons.
After "Aston Martin Music" hit the airwaves, the Grammy-award winning entertainer was, in her own words, a "very successful kid" with the dating world at her fingertips when she reconciled with her ex at the time, Doug Ellison, who she initially met in music school. The singer says that although sparks immediately flew between she and Doug, she later discovered that she was way too "childish" for this magnitude of commitment, but didn't realize this until walking down the aisle:
"I walked down the aisle to 'Love You Like A Love Song', a techno club record TOTALLY meant for high heeled, couch dancing at LIV in Miami (or maybe Lavo in Vegas). Childish."
Throughout their marriage, Chrisette and her husband endured a number of devastating moments together, including but not limited to a miscarriage and her Trump-related media debacle but now, looking back, the 36-year-old singer says that she only got married to prove the validity of her adulthood. According to Chrisette, their ideas of settling down were much different:
"I'm divorced now. I think I got married to try adulting on for size. Didn't fit. My ex had latched onto the idea that adulting was a 'thing', and I'd never gotten the memo. Sure I brought home fairly large slabs of bacon, made up the bed and opened a few businesses but… it wasn't until after we divorced that I realized he had the intentions of living in the same city, raising small opinionated beasts who would grow IN MY STOMACH, and eating at the same restaurant every Sunday. Apparently this soul quelling idea is called … 'settling down'. Eeek… I just threw up in my mouth a little."
Although Chrisette has found some peace after separating from her ex-husband, she still can't help but feel the pressures of becoming a "wife" lurking around her every day. She explained:
"One of my girlfriends text me. She said, 'I'm still hoping for magic for you.' She was talking about love. I wanted to say, 'Is it ok for a woman not to be thinking about marriage for the same amount of time as any given man?'. I wanted to ask, 'Is it enough for me to love traveling, meeting new people and long lavish walks thru Whole Foods?'. Am I 'not grown-up', if I'm not constantly wondering about love and a home for two?"
Although Chrisette still believes in the idea of love and finding "the one", first, she wants to take the time to become whole on her own.
"This is MY human experience. I'm patient enough to watch my life unfold, trust God to forgive, reveal and restore and move forward. I fall. I get embarrassed. I stay at moms, eat good, then take my vitamins and get back out there. Am I 'on the market'? You can't buy me. Am I 'single'? I'm complete. Loving me is complicated, mostly because I'm content."
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Featured image by s_bukley / Shutterstock.com
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