By Olivia Flynn
Everyone kept telling me there was nothing to be ashamed of.
And I hadn’t said anything about being ashamed, which was how I knew they were thinking there was something to be ashamed of and didn’t want me to think they thought it.
I don’t think their intentions were mean-spirited. It makes me feel justified to believe they were, but the reality is, I was too resentful to take anything well. Every pitying smile and squeeze on the shoulder only heightened my self-consciousness: the girl who’s never had a real boyfriend, maid of honor by default at her younger sister’s wedding.
Why’d they have to get married in St. George in May? As I drove down a few days before the ceremony, I tried to make that the center of my irritation.
Life’s not a race, people kept saying.
Your time will come.
It’ll happen when it happens.
Which looks nice on pastel paper in calligraphy font, but is in reality as useful as—
St. George, though. St. George was supposed to be hot, heat-advisory hot, and it was an outdoor wedding and of course my sister wanted ice cream at her outdoor wedding in St. George in May and that’s just ridiculous and if anybody asks, I can say I’m frazzled because I’m trying to keep the ice cream from melting.
St. George had to be my biggest problem.
Because I was completely resolved to be the model bridesmaid, the perfect supportive sister. To prove I could be happy for her, that my happiness wasn’t controlled by anyone but me.
That resolve crumbled the day before the wedding, at a last-minute bridal shower hosted by my sister’s in-laws. Her soon-to-be sister-in-law turned to me with a peroxide-colored smile and asked in a babyish voice, “How does it feel to watch your big sister get married?”
“I’m actually older,” I said.
The sister-in-law blinked. She dropped the baby voice. “And are you married?”
I watched my sister unwrap another gift and scribbled down who it was from. “No,” I said. Her absurd smile stayed plastered to her face. “Oh,” she said. “That’s a shame.”
The room was already small and hot with people squeezed onto every sittable surface, and my hair was plastered to my temples and the back of my neck. I felt as if some of the sweat had dribbled down to my lips and hardened, sealing my mouth shut, and I took the next chance I got to slip into the bathroom, lights off, and lean against the cool wall, and run my damp palms under cold tap water.
It soothed the heat a little, but my mouth didn’t unseal. For the rest of the day I was a mute, enslaved to the wedding’s every whim, stumbling obediently through whatever errand or task I was called away for. Chairs set up, places set, pictures sorted, decorations laid out, sodas purchased.
That night, long after we finished, I shared a hotel bed with my sister for the last time and my lips were still sealed shut.
The morning of the wedding came and I got myself ready. I had liked my dress. It was beautiful. But all I could think about as I pulled it on was, oh, that’s a shame.
As I was wrestling with my hair (textured and curly, unlike everyone else in my family), my sister, overstimulated by a hundred hands dabbing cream and blush and powder onto her face, snapped, “I don’t want your frizz in my photos.”
I knew she was just hot and nervous and running late.
But it was extra kindling. I burned from it, heat creeping up from the pit of my stomach, up my chest, up my throat, behind my eyes, and I had to close my mouth even tighter while I buttoned her into her dress and buckled her shoes.
I was still burning from it by the end of the ceremony hours later, when the officiant gestured for me to stand and be the first to embrace the new Mrs. Sister and Mr. Brother-in-Law.
I didn’t want to touch either of them. I didn’t want to be in the room. I wanted to vomit on my dress, oh, that’s a shame, make it utterly unwearable, get in my car and drive as fast as I could out into the desert and scream loud enough to startle the sleeping burrowing owls out into the blazing sun.
Instead I squeezed my mouth shut and offered them the lightest, briefest hug.
The tension must have shown enough because at lunch, relatives and friends kept asking how I was doing. It wasn’t a conversational, “How are you doing?” It was a layered question, weighted, a meaningful,
“How are you doing?”
“Good,” I’d say. Get lost.
They’d sit down and ask, casually,
if I was going on any dates,
if I had any men in my life.
There’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Pitying smile.
I wanted to snarl, leap to my feet and shake their shoulders until they asked me something, anything, different. If you can’t leave me alone, I wanted to scream, why do you have to ask about this? Are you aware of anything else going on in my life? Is there any other thought bouncing around your stupid head?
“Thank you for coming,” I always said instead, because I’d been told to be a good host.
It was a strange tension—a hard balance to understand. Watching everyone cheer for my sister, watching thousands of dollars be spent in the name of someone being lucky enough to stumble across romance, made me feel like a ghost haunting the spaces between tables, lurking behind the bridal photos.
But every time someone approached me, spoke to me, I felt ready to explode, moments away from violence or tears or both. I had to stand next to my sister at the end of the aisle during the ring ceremony, arrange her train, hold her massive bouquet, pass her the ring, listen to her exchange syrupy vows about soulmates and eternity, and the whole time I felt as if every eye was on me, pitying the single sister. Were they comparing the two of us, one of us a confident, blushing bride with golden skin and hair, a college athlete, graduating young with a STEM degree, the other a visibly awkward, unemployable liberal arts spinster with hair that, despite her sister’s wishes, would be frizzy in the photos?
It was infuriating to be compared like that. Even just in my head.
Because, in my own sphere, I felt accomplished. I was a dean’s list student in demand as a TA and tutor, a student journalist at an important university publication, a published writer, a leader at church and work. I wasn’t a college athlete, but I was a skilled hiker, a practiced distance runner. I wasn’t effortlessly athletic and beautiful and bubbly, and I wasn’t a bride, but surely I still had value.
I think that was the true source of my pain—the feeling that I was only being seen in the context of the wedding, that I was only worth my relationship status.
I wanted to be celebrated for what I’d done, rather than be pitied for what I hadn’t. I wanted to be acknowledged for the potential I’d fulfilled and not the love I couldn’t find.
But there are no parties or cards or photos for loveless accomplishments.
Nobody tells the maid of honor by default that she’s worth celebrating, too.
They just tell her there’s nothing to be ashamed of.
They acknowledge her for lack of.
And are you married?
Oh, that’s a shame.
I couldn’t watch my sister cut her wedding cake.
I couldn’t watch her father-daughter dance.
I turned my head during her exit with her new husband and refused to watch them drive away together, fevered from a day out in the St. George sun, underwear pasted to my skin, mute once more as we cleaned up trash and tables and decorations from the reception and people talked about
what a beautiful wedding,
they’ll be so happy,
there’s nothing to be ashamed of,
and I snuck away from cleanup to lock myself in the bathroom, shoes kicked into the corner, frizzy hair damp from root to split end, face glistening in the mirror.
How can you admit to your sister that the happiest day of her life was the most miserable day of your own?
I feel that if I say that out loud, I will suddenly become the sinner, the villain of the fairy tale—the girl who couldn’t find it in herself to be happy for her sister, who was so self-centered that she was upset when nobody celebrated her at someone else’s wedding.
You’re right, I’d say. It was all in my head. It was my own problem. But then I remember oh, that’s a shame, and it hurts so bad I can’t think, mouth sealed shut once more. Can the feelings be real, even if I’m ashamed to feel them?
When it was all over, my parents and I stumbled back into our air-conditioned hotel room.
I couldn’t stand to be in a room with anyone else for a single moment more. I shut myself in the bathroom and listened as my mom rewatched the video of my sister and her new husband leaving the temple.
The cheers bounced off the curves of my skull,
rebounding again,
again,
again.
I stripped out of my sweat-soaked bridesmaid’s dress and turned the shower as hot as it would go, a purge, steam pulling every emotion from my pores into the air where I could breathe them in.
I climbed in and sat on the floor, hunched over my knees, water dripping into my eyes.
And those stupid cheers just bounced around and around in my head.
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