An old girlfriend called me the other day to tell me she and her husband were having issues and she was thinking about divorce. Many of my friends are divorced or in the midst of divorce. The funny thing with this latest one is I remember watching her walk down the aisle and feeling like she was just the luckiest girl in the world. At the time, I couldn’t figure out why PB didn’t want to marry me. Hearing her cry, I began to feel that I was the lucky one after all.

Thank goodness there was no shared property or piece of paper binding me to PB. When enough was enough, I simply put his belongings in garbage bags and threw them into the street.

Looking at my life, the one goal I have never been able to achieve is marriage. I wanted to marry Heiko. I wanted to marry Robert (PB). I wanted to marry Ernie. Hell, I wanted to marry Mark Hamill and River Phoenix. How is it that I want something that seems to almost always end badly? It seems insane. Wishing, hoping, thinking, and praying, planning, and dreaming… for something that doesn’t seem to make anyone I know happy.

It then dawned on me. I am the one deeming myself a failure by simply keeping this goal front and center. There are some people out there intent to kill institutions. There are others who are just caught in the undertow of a dying institution. I think I sit in the latter camp and I am tired of fighting it.

It’s a different world out there. I am actually really happy with my life. Does it really matter if I get married? Ultimately we all die. All I want is to have a nice time on my ride on earth– love, be loved, impact people, make a difference. And binding myself to a man doesn’t seem like a necessity to achieve those goals. Besides, why must I limit myself to one man? People change. It doesn’t make sense to stick with someone just because it’s the thing to do.

Today I took down all references to marriage on my vision board. And honestly, I feel it resonates better without that imagery.