I have not spoken to my mother-in-law since I received her letter.
I have not spoken to my ex-husband since the day the divorce was finalized.
I think that’s the right distance for both of us.
There is one last thing I want to say.
Not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s true.
On the morning of the wedding, before we left, I stood in front of the mirror in our bedroom in the ivory dress and I looked at myself for a long time.
I knew what I was wearing.
I knew what it meant to show up in that color in that family on that day.
I knew it would be noticed and interpreted and logged.
And I wore it anyway.
I told myself it was defiance.
I told myself I was refusing to be coordinated, managed, arranged, and that was true.
But it was also something else.
It was the first honest thing I had done in a very long time.
I showed up as exactly what I was.
Not dusty rose, not champagne, not whatever color I was supposed to be to fit into a story someone else was telling.
I don’t think I knew then how close I was to the end.
But some part of me must have, because I wore the wrong color to a wedding.
And I felt, underneath the exhaustion and the dread, something that it took me a long time to identify correctly.
