CASEY, “YESA”
I CATCH TRISH AND Eddie’s eyes as I slowly take my first step toward Jordan. My bare feet feel the silk aisle runner and I’m instantly taken back to when Trish and I were kids. We used to have a yellow Slip-n-Slide that we set up on a hill in our backyard. We hooked it up to the garden hose and would run to the top of the hill and slide down that slick yellow mat for hours upon hours. When we were on that Slip-n-Slide, we never stopped laughing. We didn’t have a care in the world. Nothing mattered but our own happiness. What happened to those days? How had I allowed myself to become so ridged, so proper, so rule abiding? My eyes are still focused on Trish’s, we are speaking our sister language, the one without words. She’s telling me I don’t have to do this; I don’t have to go through this if it’s not what I want. My eyes are talking back to hers, telling her I feel so much pressure, telling her I’m terrified.
Before I take my next step, my dad appears. He wraps his arm in mine and tells me he’s so proud of me. What is he proud of me for? For marrying someone I’m no longer in love with and who is no longer in love with me? For being unhappy? He should be telling Trish he’s proud of her. She’s the one who’s doing it right. She’s the one who’s actually living her life, who’s actually happy. But instead he is proud of me. I feel the eyes of all of our invited guests burning a hole into me. They are studying my white fitted dress. They are telling themselves that Jordan and I are a happy couple. They are wishing they had a relationship that was young and new and blissful. What they don’t know is that I’m wishing that too. I’m the bride and I’m wishing for the same things they are. To be madly in love. To be unconditionally loved, and to be loved like crazy.
“Crap happens.” The words scroll through my mind on repeat. It’s what Jordan said the first day we met. Crap happens. It does and today is unfortunately one of those days that it will. I nearly laugh out loud wondering if those words – crap happens – were foreshadowing of our relationship. But now is no time to laugh. I’m in a wedding gown that is too tight, my dad latched to my arm, Jordan is waiting for my arrival at the end of the aisle and the seats full of guests anticipating my slow walk toward my future husband.
I catch Trish’s eyes again. She nods. I swallow hard. Quickly, I unlatch my arm from my father’s, avoiding eye contact with him. I do my best to ignore the piercing stares of the crowd, our invited guests. This is a day they will surely remember, not for its beauty, but for its uniqueness. I press my lips together and decide not to look up at Jordan at all. I don’t want to. I can’t. I’ve already made my decision. It’s time. My dad opens his mouth to say something, but before he can I turn and run. I hear the sighs of the crowd, and the quiet murmurs quickly grow into voices of concern. I’m running in my bare feet through the grass, but I have no idea where I’m going. I use my hands to pull my dress up, otherwise I will fall. I want to just rip the dress off of me. It’s too tight, too restricting. It’s not the dress I wanted. But right now I have to keep running, I just don’t know to where to go.