FICTION posted by onlysecond
Today is the day my life will change forever.
I’m staring at the ceiling as I lay in bed, listening to the house wake up. Mom is running back and forth outside, trying to remember any more last-minute tasks I’d forgotten to do. Such faith in me, Mom.
I’m reluctant to leave the warmth and comfort of my bed on the last morning I’ll ever spend on it. I finally get up and trudge to the bathroom. A mutant outside–my cousin, I’m guessing, yells to everyone that I’m finally up. Yup, it’s goodbye silence.
For the next two hours I’m bathed, dressed, styled, and fussed over, my family’s excited chatter swirling around me like a familiar veil. Then someone mentions your name and it’s as if someone pressed MUTE; and the whole world seems to just fade away. You’ve always had that effect on me. You probably always will.
I remember bits and pieces of us throughout the years, from the time you stole my lunch freshman year (you big bully) to when you held me under the bleachers in college when my professor published my paper as his own, to when you treated my entire office to coffee and donuts just to get my out of my PMS funk, to when you helped heal the rift between my sister and me…
Not all of our days were good, but the good is what I remember. You always were the best to me, to everyone. Even when I was quietly going crazy, all I needed to hear was your laughter to make me feel like maybe things will get better. You made me feel like I was the Marge to your Homer, like I was more than who I thought I was. I fell in love with the version of me that you saw, and that’s the me I’ll always want to be.
I barely notice the ride to the church, but when it’s my time to walk, all the little details become starkly clear. I take a long deep breath and start that seemingly endless trek down the aisle. I can hear the guests whispering, looking at me and wondering what I’m thinking this very moment.
This very moment, every memory of our life together runs through my mind like a crap B movie I wouldn’t pay to see. Every secret shared, every fight resolved, every step towards growing up is playing in my head. I can see the tears in your eyes and I want to smile and tell you everything’s going to be okay.
Then I take my place. And I look back at the entrance of the church, back at the person I love most. The person about to take my best friend and the only person who’s ever made me feel complete away from me forever. It’s not my sister’s fault you fell in love with her, and neither is it mine, you said. But just because no one is to blame doesn’t mean no one’s heart got broken in the process.
Now our memories together are replaced by thoughts of running away and never coming back, of leaving my old, full, lovely life behind because I couldn’t bear to face you as family–but not my own–for as long as I’m here.
Yes I love her, yes I love you, and I know that someday, after this day, I will once again learn to love the me without you.
My heart still aches