Hot Mess Kitchen

The change happens slowly. In the beginning, two of your friends have serious significant others. Then one of the couples breaks up because they realize they’re not ready to take the next step, or they fear they’ll have unattractive babies together. The other couple, though; the other couple gets engaged. And it’s fun. It’s your first friend getting married. Is she a little young? Sure. Would you get married at her age? No, definitely not, but you’re not going to say anything. You’re going to get the save-the-date, put it up on your fridge, and enjoy feeling like a grown-up as you browse her registry. Look at me, you’ll think, I’m, like, an adult.

Then before you know it, the other friend who’d been dumped has found someone new. And even though it’s only been six months, she’s sure this is the guy. Jonathan was comfortable and sweet, but Raoul is adventurous. Now that she knows him she can’t picture a life without him. They take hikes literally every morning. Can you believe it? Good for her, that’s great. Just hope she knows she’s paying for your ticket to her destination wedding because otherwise you can’t go.

There are now two save-the-dates. Then out of the blue your high school boyfriend emails you the most beautiful save-the-date you’ve ever seen, for his engagement to his fiancé, Roger. This save-the-date is so gorgeous that you simply have to go to The Copy Shop to print it out and put it on your fridge. You tell yourself you want a more complete representation of all the different kinds of couples on your fridge.

Three is an okay number; you can handle three. Hell, you wanted three. But then you get another save-the-date from your coworker and you feel a strange compulsion to put it up on the fridge too. “The fridge needs diversity,” you say. “The fridge holds up a mirror to the world.”

Jump ahead two months. You’ve become obsessed. Your apartment is covered in save-the-dates and wedding invitations and you don’t remember a life before people started getting engaged. You can’t help yourself. You’ve even printed out engagement announcements from Facebook of people you don’t know. Your closet is covered with Instagram photos of your favorite online weddings. You read a list of your favorite wedding hashtags before you go to sleep at night. This décor and behavior ensures that you will not miss any upcoming weddings, but also reminds you that you are stagnant. Other people are moving on and you are not.

Your behavior worsens. You go to spin class, and all the people you’ve been spinning with for the past four years are pregnant. You take Polaroids of them to hang up in your apartment. They’re moving on and you want to be further reminded of your place in life as compared to theirs. You imagine memories that never happened; you say, “I used to spend every Saturday having brunch with these girls and now it’s all Lamaze class.” You never spent one Saturday in your life with these girls, and you know that, come on.

Calm down. Stop hyperventilating in front of your Pinterest shrine to the English countryside wedding you may never have. You’ll probably have it.

It’s really hard when people around you are taking life steps that you either aren’t ready for, don’t want, or just haven’t found the right person to take them with. When everyone around you is getting married, you can start to feel like some sort of child, or at least that’s how I feel. I feel like I must be missing something. These people are moving on and I can’t. I’m a kid. The truth is, though, while plenty of people I know are moving forward, at the age of twenty-eight, I’m not entirely ready to.

This is why I so very much love this mud pie. It encapsulates how I feel. On the outside, it looks like a totally grown-up, hard-to-make adult mud pie, but on the inside it’s all ice cream and Oreos. Let’s also be clear that everyone getting married doesn’t necessarily have their shit together either. They’re just getting married; we don’t know what their other problems are. Everyone moves at their own pace, but when you feel like you’re falling behind, make this dessert.

I suggest that while making this pie, you crush the Oreos with a bottle of red wine. Take a swig, crush, swig, and crush. You get it. Bring the pie to an engagement party and everyone will love it. We’re all just pie on the outside and ice cream and Oreos on the inside.

Also, take down all those invitations on the walls. That’s insane. You’re crazy.

ALL MY FRIENDS ARE MARRIED MUD PIE

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