Wedding Day

Good morning internet! I like starting off the week on a light note...well, not really. The following is a story I started working on a while back. It's now turned into a 3,000 word essay, but here are the wee, few paragraphs that it started off as before it became a monstrous piece that has taken over my days and nights for the past month. The evolution of a story, for your reading pleasure. You might want to pop a Prozac first.
.........................

She stared at the floral patterned curtains that billowed into the room where she sat. The loneliness was surprising, overwhelming despite the crowded room. Detached, she watched her sisters and friends move about, their words moving slowly towards her as though through a thick morass. No one saw the doubt in her eyes, her disguise having been completed in years past when she talked herself into loving her waiting groom. That fact had been buried so deeply into her dreams long ago that it had shocked her to note in the weeks before her wedding that she was not in love with the man she was about to meet at the end of the aisle.

She was vexed by her indecision but it was strangely comforting to think twice about something for once in her life, her certainty about everything having become a burden she wished to shed. She was the sweet one, the strong one, always loved by someone, though she sometimes wondered if she had really ever known what it was to return that sentiment.

He had taken all that she could give and she had eventually bent under the weight of his love, molding first to one thing and then another until she wasn’t sure where the borders were between them anymore. The seamlessness worried her - she wasn’t sure she existed, the plot of their lives having been simplified into a story that was no longer hers. She had wanted to stray from the screenplay, but improvisation had never been her strong suit. In the last few weeks, she had started collecting the facts, putting her thoughts into neat rows in her mind, the end result being that she wondered how long she could keep this going without something fracturing beyond repair.

The night before the wedding, she had considered passing her exit on the freeway and continuing on, to any place that wasn’t here. But at the last minute, with his face looming before her, she had veered off of the road and toward home. At a stoplight, the bitter taste of everything rose up in her mouth and she screamed at the top of her lungs, a long, guttural howl that left her gasping for air as she gripped the steering wheel. She sat, shocked, as the light turned green and cars steered angrily around her. She pulled over to the side of the road as the tears came, flowing freely down her face as her body shook. She was afraid of breaking – she used to be one of the ones who didn’t weep. She felt split wide open, as though everything she had held so dear was finally spilling out of her after years of neglect. The subtle ways in which she had disappeared surfaced, demanding her attention.

And now, as the room emptied and she sat with only the floral drapes for company, she wondered if she had the strength to follow this trajectory, if she could somehow make this mess whole. Would she get so numb over time that she wouldn’t mind? Could she look into his eyes and recognize what was good? Would that be enough?

The door opened and her father peered in, his eyebrows traveling up his forehead as he saw his daughters distraught face. He came over and sat next to her, covering her hand with his own. Tears fell from her cheeks leaving distinct marks that bled like ink across the silk of her dress.

“You know,” he said slowly, measuring his words, “you don’t have to do this. It will be alright if you want to leave right now.”

“What?” she said, startled.

“Take a minute and think about it,” he continued. “I’ll wait outside.” He patted her knee and left, the door shutting silently behind him.

She didn’t know why, but somehow that permission to flee pushed her in the other direction. Years later, when forever was over and she left, finally brave enough to want something different, her fathers reaction was simply, “Good. Now you’ll be happy.”

But here, now, the self-betrayal with which she had become so intimate offered the easier path. All she had become accustomed to was on the other side of that door. She had become so used to walking backwards, to being less, to letting someone else direct her, that the other option was too daunting.

Maybe in the morning, things won’t be quite as bad as they seem, she thought.

And with that, she gathered up her dress in one hand, stood up and walked out the door.