The week before my wedding, I was sitting in my sister’s kitchen, talking about details and small town gossip, when her husband called her from the other room with a drink order. It was an order, not a request, not some kind of pleasantry, and while my sister was standing up, she gave me this look that shot right through me, piercing and dark. She held it for a quarter of a second, then blinked, looked down and curled her lips into resigned smile before turning towards the refrigerator.

The next day I woke up, rolled over and told Roy that I couldn’t marry him. It was sort of just like that, and I’m sorry, because I love him, and that was a rotten thing to do. I should’ve at least waited for him to really wake up and put on a pair of pants. A man shouldn’t get dumped without pants. It’s not nice. I wasn’t feeling nice, though, I sort of snapped and by noon all of the wedding plans were cancelled. We had to eat the cost of the food, my dress and some deposits, but I sort of like that. I have a reminder in my closet every morning and on my plate every afternoon of the mistake I made, and it does a little to assuage my guilt about the whole mess.

When I say mistake, I don’t mean breaking up with Roy. I want to make that clear. I don’t even mean a single mistake, but a whole line of mistaken and naïve thinking about what it meant to be an adult and in a successful relationship. Well, the idea that there is such thing as a successful relationship, in the first place, was a mistake. It’s not really something you can win or lose. I don’t think it was a waste because we didn’t get married and live happily ever after. I didn’t waste any time with Roy. I learned a lot about myself and he was really important for my emotional development, but now it’s time for me to develop a little on my own. I go out drinking and gossiping with the girls now; I go on bad dates. I’m having the sort of new adult experiences that most people have when they are 23, and it is kind of fun.

So, and I know you are going to ask about this, I didn’t dump Roy to be with Jim. I’ll admit it: I was crushing on him pretty hard for awhile. I’ve started speaking to a therapist a little since the break-up, and she thinks this was a real indication that I wasn’t mature enough to be diving into a marriage. She kind of prattled on about how you have to have a lot of crushes and a few nasty break-ups before you know enough about yourself to make a real emotional commitment to someone for life. But anyway, he freaked me out when he declared his total undying love to me. He was always the guy who I would totally like to go on a fun date with or maybe kiss, once, in the kitchen, maybe. I thought if we went on a date, we could get some ice cream cones and take a walk on the bikepath around the duck pond at the county park. We could talk and laugh and it would be really cool and relaxed. We can’t really do that now. There’s a lot of pressure. He hit me with an emotional intensity that I wasn’t prepared for at all.

I do miss him, though. I had hoped we could work through some of this stuff. Like – we could have a really great talk and I could try to understand what he means by “I’m in love with you,” and why he did and said the things he did. If he were here, I would do that, but he’s not. I’m a little pissed at him about that, actually. He dropped this bomb and then bolted without even trying to explain. He left, and he hasn’t contacted me since, and…he was supposed to be my friend, dammit.