Catastrophe

And just like that, my world shattered. A thick mass in my chest prevented air from escaping or intruding. The large lump that clogged my throat for the following year balled up from that heaviness and lumbered to its home. My eyes pricked and blurred before I had time to save my mascara from the watery onslaught that followed.
Stacie’s eyes and lips were impassioned, saying a million things to cushion the blow but it was if I had wads of wet cotton lodged in my ears. As if they sensed my vulnerability, every thought that I’d pushed to the back of my mind since our engagement party.
He left me. He left me all alone.
Oh no. Oh no. No no no no.
This has to be a joke. It has to be a joke.
What — -What am I supposed to do now?
I’m ruined. I’m ruined.
I’m ruined.
I used to pity girls like this. I binged movies about them. I watched them crumple to the ground with an expression that I was positive now mirrored mine. I squeezed his arm, snuggling closer to him on our futon to bury my face in his chest. To smell him. To claim him.
To flaunt him.
Because there was no way that they would be me. I was in love! And here was a man that loved me. We were getting married, we would move into the house on the hill and we would be happy. I would not sit on the floor in piles of cloth, surrounded by friends cooing their comforts. I would not ruin my three hundred dollar makeup job with streams of mucus and pained expressions to crack my foundation. My dressing room would not echo with chest racking sobs that would boomerang as taunts.
Yet, here I sat with my knees pulled to my chest. It was the only way to keep from screaming and confirming my patheticness to the world. Mountains of mascara pocked tulle ballooned around me, cocooning me in my despair, trapping me with my memories and his lies. I let myself turn to liquid and prayed to God that someday my wings would come. Later on, I heard she squeezed his arm as they left the church together. I chuckled ruefully when Stacie told me because I realized that it was never mine to hold. Another cousin of mine said that she buried her face in his chest as scandalized whispered followed them to the can ladened Laurel. Later on, she probably buried it in his hair and he in hers and he in her and she would let him. They would move into the house on the hill, the house that she showed us. The house that she helped me decorate. And they would watch brides crumble…
Just.
Like.
Me.
With that knowledge lodged firmly in my mind like the lump in my throat, I sat.
What else was a jilted bride to do?
