I was sitting in a church filled with my friends and family. As we stood up to leave someone turned and said to me, "The next time we come here, it'll be for your wedding!"
"Great!" I thought, filled with excitement. Until it dawned on me that my true love was in a far off land, I hadn't spoken to him in months and had no real way of communicating with him, since all 'normal' methods of communication didn't work.
So just who was I marrying?
Apparently a younger colleague of my dad's, who was apparently 'lovely', had taken a shine to me and he and my parents had worked together to arrange our wedding.
Their line of thinking was that I had been sad for many months since losing my true love and they wanted to see me happy so they thought that if I 'just married a nice man' I would forget all of my heartache and even if I didn't love him at first, I would learn to love him and be happy.
The dress was bought, the invitations had been sent out... all I had to do was go home and get ready.
I immediately went into panic-mode. Who were they to decide what will make me happy? If I wanted to hold onto the lofty goal of my true love and I reconciling in the future, who were they to tell me not to?
And what if he came back into my life and I was married to someone else? What then?
I just knew I couldn't go through with it, but the pressure to do so was unbearable! I began to cry tears of frustration. Maybe if they saw how distraught I was and that marrying a complete stranger wouldn't 'fix' me, no matter how lovely he was, they wouldn't make me go through with it? Instead I just got scoffed at and told to 'suck it up'.
All I kept thinking about was the scene in Sex & the City when Charlotte is about to walk down the aisle but is having doubts and Carrie tells her that if she doesn't want to go through with the wedding then 'everyone will just have to get over it'.
Where was my somebody to give me an out?
I decided there was no other option but to pack my bags and run away, to let them know I was serious about not wanting to go through with it. As I packed my belongings, I mused that even if I could learn to love my groom-to-be, I knew that I'd drop him in a heartbeat if my true love came back into my life. Surely it was better to break his heart now, rather than later?
I was so angry. I was angry at my family for thinking they know what's best for me, when they had no idea. I was even angry at my true love as he didn't realise how inconvenient his silence was for me.
However, something I said or did must have resonated with them eventually as my dad agreed to tell his colleague that the wedding wouldn't be going ahead. When I saw that my mum was still getting my niece and nephews dressed up I said, "But the wedding is off?"
And she responsed with, "Yes, but instead of a wedding, it's just a party now"
I headed off to get changed... into anything but a wedding dress!
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