It’s Wedding Day.
A public marriage requires two consenting adults and any number of my own internal struggles.
We are gathered here today to bear witness to a marriage. The joining of my anxieties and my emotional baggage. I should have figured out long ago that I could just zip one neatly inside the other and free up a hand for other things like flossing. Also a bride and groom are involved, but vows take 4 minutes tops. Destructive family dynamics last a lifetime.
We will gather because of this postcard invite, absent an RSVP line that would have made bowing out much easier. Not showing up now would trigger emails and phone calls asking whether the postman made a mistake. Of course I would lie.
Perhaps discussions were had when paring down the guest list and I should feel grateful to have made the cut. I know consideration couldn’t have happened without some number of pros and cons tossed about the room. I wonder what concessions were made and who is out there tonight going about their routine, blissfully unaware they weren’t worth the postage or the seat or the chicken.
We will gather at 4 pm on a Friday. I’m guessing the venue was cheaper then, which makes sense because that’s peak heat index here in August’s tired armpit where swimming counts as a bath.
I will work until Noon. I will spend more time primping than the bride, because they might whisper behind my back about a few extra pounds, but Goddammit, they will say I have “such a pretty face”. Noon will give the liquor time to course through my veins, soften my tongue, numb my heart, and steel my shell.
Today I will wrap my gift in an unnecessarily large box so nobody will want to chat with me (or worse — touch me) on my way in. I will only be pretending that it is unusually heavy and awkward, but not so much that someone will offer to take it from me.
Today my handwriting will flourish beyond the one allotted line for my family in the guest book so that should the page see the light of day again, I may prove that I was there.
That I am here.
Today I will shove the bits of clear wax I bought to keep pool water out of my kid’s ears into my own canals. It will muffle the chaos of the party to a low din. It will muffle the already low murmur of a well-meaning voice leaning in to tell me I really should work things out with my mother.
That she is old. That she can’t even remember the things she did to hurt me, if those things are even true, and they doubt it. That her vision is failing. And that between those two things they heard her call my children by the wrong names earlier.
And they will remind me of all the faux-news delivered to them about me, about all the horrible things I have done and said, the second- and third- and fourth- and fifth-hand accounts of how ungrateful I have been that she rescued me from such a trashy life.
Like a sad, unwanted mutt from the pound.
That I’m only hurting myself by putting distance between me and those whose loyalty I won’t ever have to test by asking for a kidney. We wouldn’t match anyway. Lucky for both of us, I suppose.
I’ll go because weddings are the best place to continue superficial relationships. Everything at a wedding is literally sugar-coated and nobody knows that you’re not crying tears of joy. I’d say the preference is outpaced by funerals just for the lack of expectation that you smile, but funerals lose more points in the “uninvited hugs” category.
It’s a tie.
I’ll check and recheck the integrity of the six pieces of double-stick tape I used to secure the card to the present, wanting more than anything for the couple to know their success in marriage does not depend on today going well, but on their ability to be faithful when it matters — not watching forward to the next episode on Netflix behind the other person’s back.
If anyone needs me I’ll be at the corner table, waiting anxiously for the appropriate time to excuse myself. I’ll fling open double-doors and know again the sweet freedom doves feel when they’re released, scattering away from their flock and cooing out to their mate.
Just know that if my mate is still on the dance floor when I coo out to him that it’s time to go, there will be blood.
