I was putting on my dress, alone....in the home of my future mother in law. Everything had been "arranged" it seems without my consent, or even caring about the way I would have liked things done. A hall was rented by his mother, one that I had never seen before. The decorations were being done by people I did not even know, friends of his family. The cake was picked out by his sister. The dress had to be "appropriate" according to my soon to be husband, nothing lavish he wanted it to be as simple as possible. His reasoning was....people spend so much time on the superficial things when the vow and commitment was most important. Everything that day was as everyone else wanted it....except me.
The only thing I had to do was show up.
I felt like a guest at my own wedding.
Even then, while getting dressed for what was supposed to be one of the most important and special days of my life, my insides were banging on the walls of my soul, desperately trying to demand my attention.
"It's just wedding jitters," I told myself in what would be a familiar state of cognitive dissonance.
On the radio came a song that brought me to my knees.....it was Butterfly Kisses.....
I hadn't heard that song in a while and each word seemed to pierce my heart and my tears literally jumped out of my eyes, refusing to be stifled.
Such a beautiful song.....portraying everything I had ever wanted and never had.
My father..who I did not meet until I was 13 was practically a stranger. There was no man standing there with love in his eyes, remembering the child I once was.....admiring the woman I had become.
Not even my mother was there.
She had been to busy racing me to the alter and was too preoccupied with her own new husband to even have had time to go dress shopping with me.
Just another thing I had to do all alone.
I cried also for the little girl inside who never had ribbons in her hair, who never felt pretty or lovable.
That song was a fantasy of mine, as if someone read my thoughts, eavesdropped on my daydreams and conjured up one of the most famous wedding songs during the year I was married.
And jeez, why did it have to play now....had it been a sign...trying to wake me up somehow???
I cried so hard that my maid of honor heard me and came in to the room.
She thought I was touched by the song, and she hugged me and I cried harder than I had ever cried before.
"It's ok to cry," she said as she held me together.
I wanted to run..... I wanted to escape....but I felt it was too late. I had let this relationship go on too long and now I had to lay in the bed I myself made.
At the wedding party.....there was a table for the couple and those in the wedding....
I ate alone.....every bridesmaid had their brides man beside them....I ate with an empty chair beside me....because the groom was so busy charming others than to have time to sit by his new wife and share their first meal as a couple together....
At one point we bumped into each other on the dance floor....no we were not dancing ....I had no idea where he was or who he was talking to, with over 200 people in the hall it was difficult to know who he was dazzling and when. So I tried to dance as much as possible to hide my loneliness. See, I wasn't lonely just because the groom hadn't spent more than 2 minutes with me since we tied the knot, no I was dancing and smiling and already covering for him and supporting his false image of an amazing man.
At that moment when we bumped into each other, I look back now and can tell he was uncomfortable although I was happy and trying to talk with him. I glanced away at the dance floor while continuing my conversation and when I glanced back toward him......he was gone.
I had finished that sentence to know one....I had been talking to myself.
Feeling mortified I glanced around wondering if anyone had seen me talking to myself.......and wishing I could close my eyes and wake up to find that this had all been nothing but a bad dream.
But it wasn't a dream...it was my reality.
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