Someday...

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

-Agnes Repplier

          I wasn’t a virgin but my wedding dress was white. My love for him was pure as if I’d waited all my life trapped high upon castles and deep within dungeons hoping he’d burst in at any moment sporting blinding silver armor to save me. Life for me had been fickle before he arrived, before love we can honestly only view the world with jaded, jejune eyes. The dress I wore was a kimono inspired by our Japanese theme. It was a silk sweetheart cut gown with a small obi wrapped tightly around the waistline. There was no train but the back burst into beautiful detailing underneath the security of the obi. The spectators all watched as I walked steadily between the aisles. My poise deflected their glares of doubt. I could see the finish line ahead and as I took each step I silently prayed my feet wouldn’t fail me. We had walked a long road and I was afraid that my toes couldn’t take much more. Blistered, bloody, and bare they were concealed by the heel I wore. My father wanted to assist me down the aisle but I informed him it was a trip I must take alone. Just as I came into this unforgiving world, just as I met my groom on that chili fall evening, just as I felt when things between us seemed to have come to an end, alone.

           I knew that somewhere high up in the pew were the ones that came after me and in the stands beside me the ones that came before also observed my stride. I had made a note to myself to thank them all for being apart of the alignment that had brought us all into the room that day. The first for bringing him 1,163 miles across the country, the second for allowing him to be in a position to meet me, and all those there after for allowing him to realize he couldn’t live without me. The universe seems so small when the only person’s life you care about is your own. I often wondered if any of them spent nights in bed alone wiping tears off their dampened faces while imagining me snugly curled up within his arms. If they did then I had silently had let out a “sorry”, and if they didn’t then they never truly cared. My eyes would never run dry as I used to think of him possibly loving them more than he loved me. Society will tell you to be content in the fact that someone even loves you in the least bit, but to me that meant little to nothing. I had love for many of the men that had come into my life. However that love wasn’t what woke me up in the mornings and tucked me into bed at night. It was the love that might have caused me to release a cup from my tear ducts and not a river. It wasn’t the type of love that consumed me, nor the type of love that at times I felt as if I couldn’t live without. To me that was the only form of love worth fighting for and I had only found it within him.

           As I continued to trek a bit further I reached my family’s section. Half were there to support me and the other half simply to observe, run back, and tell. They thought love was scandal. It simply did not exist. In any situation I was being used, made a fool of, or taken for granted. As they looked at me I could still see those feelings in their stares. Tissues in their palms as if they were saving them for me once my heart inevitably broke again. All that they’d tell me was easily said and not done. My mother had once told me, “In 5 years you won’t give a damn about him.” I stared her in the eyes, expression full of certainty, and responded, “In 5 years we will be married.” Here we were. I concluded long ago that no one had to believe in us but each other. In love it never takes more than two. I looked away from them before their glowers instilled any uncertainty. I kept my glance forward with my eyes focused on the prize.

           Approaching the altar I could see my friends. Their smiles were due to a mandatory obligation for the current occasion. Once the reception began they would laugh and give heart-felt anecdotes that brought me to tears. But they hated him. I knew it all too well. Some wouldn’t even allow me to mention his name in their presence. I had once asked myself why they never supported my love for him. Was it because they were bitter? Or because they couldn’t believe that a man like him could ever love a person like me. Someone responded and told me, “they are bitter because they believe.” Maybe that was true for the half of them but I knew it wasn’t for many. Some weren’t jealous or bitter they just had lived long enough to develop a sense of what love was. They all would always tell me why I was wrong without ever getting it right themselves. All I had was his love to defend me from any and everything they said. There were the ones that spoon fed my insecurity by saying things such as, “I wonder what boys think of you when you wake up with no make up on.” There were the private investigators that would loyally report back to me with every step he’d take hoping that I would crack in their face. Then there were the ones that simply made me feel as if it was all purely my fault. I was either an “idiot” or an “enabler” which was a fancy way of saying “idiot”. Despite it all, I needed them their to witness how easily I beat the odds of their predictions. They needed to know that in my life there were such things as happy endings. They needed to know this not only for me but for themselves as well. So that they could believe they also could find someone as amazing as I had someday.  People view love as this terrible cynical emotion because they fall for terrible, cynical people. I fell for an imperfect Angel and as I made it to the center of the altar he finally stood before me.

           We said nothing allowing our eyes to communicate everything. I glanced over the grace of his body. A figure that I could trace in a deep slumber with eyes shut tight. I knew every inch of it from the stretch marks beneath his buttocks, to the pitch-black tattoo on the lower right side of his belly, all the way up to the outline of his full lips that concealed his teeth when he spoke with calming clarity.  I would often dream of it on the nights I had spent away from his presence. Every part worked to portray exactly the man was supposed to be. When other people saw him they immediately recognized his handsomeness. Conversely, when I looked it him I saw so much more. This was the person who stood by my side when I was within my darkest days. Sure he knew he was beautiful, but he wasn’t consumed within his beauty. He was humble. He was pure.

His glance broke into a smile and I soaked in its radiance. In that moment I knew I was where I was supposed to be, where he was supposed to be, where we where supposed to be. Our souls where the only two in the room that mattered and everyone else were simply there just to see if my heart had contained a brain after all. He had made many promises that he came short of keeping however this was the only one that mattered. I would tease him with dreams of marriage when we were younger. Most of the time he would give me a classic look of skepticism but sometimes he would entertain my ambition. Ultimately, he told us that we needed to have it together and at that point we did. Salaries, Degrees, and stability… The things your parents always had but you never paid much attention to. What you had to work hard for. Love and marriage was the delicious desert after an unappetizing entree. I had forced myself through the first two courses. They were thick and greasy with pain and drama with an appealing beverage to help wash it all down. I was finally ready to have my cake and ice cream with the most satisfying sprinkles. There was no debate, I knew it was going to be delicious and as I looked up into his eyes I knew that he knew it too.

The pastor began to speak but I could not hear a word he said. For the first time in my life a shed a tear because I was happy. Happiness was an ending that I had expelled to the fairy tale books on the shelves of public libraries and the closets of toddlers. It was a fantasy I allowed my friends and family to conjure out of my psyche and imprison within their bitterness. It was a candy that I adored as a child but couldn’t stand to consume as an adult. I once had believed that God had put it in him, all of it, and if I wanted to get it back I had to fight as hard as I could. Yet somewhere in it all my fighting I realized that our happiness lies within ourselves. Throughout life it is easy to lose that happiness. As we mature our happiness becomes as vulnerable as our innocence. It is easy to lose it to the lies lovers tell, the friends you can never trust, the family that stopped caring, and the society that is unforgiving. When you rediscover your happiness has been within you all along then that is when everything falls perfectly into place. You block out all of the doubt in yourself, the insecurities and feeling that you’ll never be good enough. You disregard anyone else who ever loved him because you know that no one ever loved more than you did and no one ever will. You ignore the negative advice given to you by friends and family that know nothing about anything you are going through. Life suddenly becomes worth living and mocks the inevitable face of death. I dared not wipe my tears away because for the first time in my life… I deserved them.