When I tell people that I broke off my engagement, they usually tend to tell me that they have no idea how that feels, and they can't even imagine what I am going through. Allow me to try to explain.
Ugh.
Breaking off an engagement, especially when it isn't necessarily mutual is just traumatic. It's not as traumatic as being hit by a semi and nearly plunging to your death into a shallow, icy river, but thinking back that would have been a lot quicker and maybe even less painful. As if the break wasn't enough to grieve over, there are so many things that require un-doing in "It's Already Done" land.
A lot of brides sign up for TheKnot.com right after engagement where you're supposed to talk to bitchy brides-to-be about how crazy you all fucking are and why it's so goddamned important to freak out if your bows are one shade too dark and by God if they don't match the flowers just so, a rampage is to ensue. Can I tell my fiancee I don't like his Best Man? Is it bad etiquette to say 'no children'? My family is paying more than his family for wedding expenses! Help! BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. It does a fantastic job of overwhelming you to the point that you forget what is actually important about your wedding day. The only great thing about TheKnot.com is that when you get married and the computer recognizes that your account is now days later than your earlier-entered projected wedding date, you get automatically graduated to TheNest.com. TheNest.com is exactly like the Knot, except that now everyone talks about being newlyweds and when their husbands are gonna let them have babies. Home decor dilemmas? Say it isn't so. He wants blue and you want lilac? You should probably cry about it online to other paranoid and delusional people, I've heard that helps. You know what really sucks though? When you can't undo your account (and get too angry navigating the site to figure out how) and tell the damn site that you didn't get married at all and that you're not a Nestie, you're just alone. Good old-fashioned alone. Thanks Nest for reminding me. Thanks for the follow up 'congratulations, hope you had fun on your honeymoon' e-mail you sent me, because that didn't make me cry at all. Also, thanks for the awesome newsletters you send out that beg the real important questions like Are You Having Enough Sex? Are You Ready for a Baby? and other reminders that I can stop trying to 'hook a man' such as 6 Great Comfort Food Recipes and Great Date Nights Without Leaving The House. I don't need Home Buying Help. I only need help figuring out how the fuck to get OFF YOUR MAILING LIST BECAUSE I DON'T LIVE IN PRINCESS DREAM LAND ANYMORE.
Another awesome thing about calling off an engagement is running into someone you haven't seen since they saw you last wherein you were engaged. It's one of those anchor topics that they are sure to ask you about right off the bat. "How was the wedding!" or "When is the wedding!" It's almost-always good-natured, which makes the sympathetic recoil even worse when you explain that you didn't get married after all, and/or any time you use the term ex-fiancee. This is generally followed by "What happened?" (then like 80 vodka sodas) or "Better now than five years down the road." Thanks; I will keep reminding myself of that when I log in to my bank account and realize I spent all my money on down payments for futility and I can no longer afford to buy new pants or dog food.
Also, commercials for diamonds, engagement, or anything to do with weddings? Not so much. Never has anything in the history of things been able to sour a day like seeing two happy people getting fake-TV engaged after yours fell apart. Nothing. They can die of feigned happiness into a pit of rainbows for all I care. And I don't.
Have you ever heard of wedding dress angst? Well I just made that term up, but it exists. This is a unique blend of wistfulness, sadness, and pure anger. One of the saddest moments in my entire life was when I walked into the room after canceling my wedding, and saw my wedding dress just hanging there, still in protective cellophane. It was just like seeing a garment woven with my own dreams, time lapsing right in front of me, collecting dust, waiting there until.... what? When? Maybe waiting for absolutely nothing at all; maybe it would never have the one moment for which it was specifically designed to have. And, even if it did get its moment, something meant to be so virginal and pristine and so sacred had already been tarnished by a past failure, and would forever. I thought ahead to myself in five years, putting 'dust off the wedding dress' on my list of things to do for the day. This is the springboard into the anger, in which the dress itself and what it is supposed to stand for is so beautiful that it must, too, be destroyed in the same fiery pit of pain and despair that I've been suffering through for months. I can't even pass a wedding dress in a window without feeling like an angel just stabbed me in the heart. It is an inconceivably difficult emotional situation, one that I can't even say with any certainty will get better.
How much of a free-thinking badass you are in everyday life gives you absolutely no defense to the inordinate amount of failure you'll be feeling on your shoulders, imposed from yourself, their (and your) friends, the unrelenting media, and just life in general. I was at a point where I couldn't even see two birds perched beside each other on the same branch without wanting to throw myself onto the ground and cry. There is a dark month or two in which experiencing anything or anyone happy just conjures this deep, black anger from inside your soul. I would get pissed off at the sun for shining, strangers for doing just about anything, and other shit that made no sense whatsoever. I would walk past a child stacking blocks and feel a real need to kick them all over if for no other reason than that they made the kid happy, and fuck that kid for being happy, 'cause I'm not. Because if I'm a good person and bad things happen to me, then only in fairness should they happen to all good people to make me feel better, right? Because having a broken heart is complete justification for me being a self-absorbed dick for as long as I want, just so you know. You aren't wearing a cast or a sling, and so no one walking by you on the street knows what sort of scarred emotional burden you are carrying. You're 30 years old and you have a job, and no employer is going to give you cry breaks in 15-minute intervals so you can feel sorry for yourself and reflect back on your sad life. Clients don't stop calling in because your heart hurts. The obviousness of life continuing to go on around you is another cold reminder that yours does, too, whether you feel it should or not.
Eventually it does, and you get past your wedding-date-to-be with a cold shiver and a box of wine, there are no more e-mails to send canceling any other venues or services, you stop getting pissed off at birds, and you move on with the friends that didn't stop speaking to you out of loyalty to your ex. Essentially you go through a transformation that you and everyone else convinces you is 'way better'.
And one day, you believe it.
Also, commercials for diamonds, engagement, or anything to do with weddings? Not so much. Never has anything in the history of things been able to sour a day like seeing two happy people getting fake-TV engaged after yours fell apart. Nothing. They can die of feigned happiness into a pit of rainbows for all I care. And I don't.
Have you ever heard of wedding dress angst? Well I just made that term up, but it exists. This is a unique blend of wistfulness, sadness, and pure anger. One of the saddest moments in my entire life was when I walked into the room after canceling my wedding, and saw my wedding dress just hanging there, still in protective cellophane. It was just like seeing a garment woven with my own dreams, time lapsing right in front of me, collecting dust, waiting there until.... what? When? Maybe waiting for absolutely nothing at all; maybe it would never have the one moment for which it was specifically designed to have. And, even if it did get its moment, something meant to be so virginal and pristine and so sacred had already been tarnished by a past failure, and would forever. I thought ahead to myself in five years, putting 'dust off the wedding dress' on my list of things to do for the day. This is the springboard into the anger, in which the dress itself and what it is supposed to stand for is so beautiful that it must, too, be destroyed in the same fiery pit of pain and despair that I've been suffering through for months. I can't even pass a wedding dress in a window without feeling like an angel just stabbed me in the heart. It is an inconceivably difficult emotional situation, one that I can't even say with any certainty will get better.
How much of a free-thinking badass you are in everyday life gives you absolutely no defense to the inordinate amount of failure you'll be feeling on your shoulders, imposed from yourself, their (and your) friends, the unrelenting media, and just life in general. I was at a point where I couldn't even see two birds perched beside each other on the same branch without wanting to throw myself onto the ground and cry. There is a dark month or two in which experiencing anything or anyone happy just conjures this deep, black anger from inside your soul. I would get pissed off at the sun for shining, strangers for doing just about anything, and other shit that made no sense whatsoever. I would walk past a child stacking blocks and feel a real need to kick them all over if for no other reason than that they made the kid happy, and fuck that kid for being happy, 'cause I'm not. Because if I'm a good person and bad things happen to me, then only in fairness should they happen to all good people to make me feel better, right? Because having a broken heart is complete justification for me being a self-absorbed dick for as long as I want, just so you know. You aren't wearing a cast or a sling, and so no one walking by you on the street knows what sort of scarred emotional burden you are carrying. You're 30 years old and you have a job, and no employer is going to give you cry breaks in 15-minute intervals so you can feel sorry for yourself and reflect back on your sad life. Clients don't stop calling in because your heart hurts. The obviousness of life continuing to go on around you is another cold reminder that yours does, too, whether you feel it should or not.
Eventually it does, and you get past your wedding-date-to-be with a cold shiver and a box of wine, there are no more e-mails to send canceling any other venues or services, you stop getting pissed off at birds, and you move on with the friends that didn't stop speaking to you out of loyalty to your ex. Essentially you go through a transformation that you and everyone else convinces you is 'way better'.
And one day, you believe it.
