Starting out the day, I was feeling confident and hopeful. I knew it would be a test, a trial of some kind, set before me by the gods, or God, or Fate or Roxanne herself. I knew it would be a challenge. A challenge to hold up, to be strong in the face of tragedy, to accept my fate as they played out before me, that momentous day.
Yes, I say and use the word, tragedy, and not lightly for that is what is was. It was tragic. For me, that is. It was my tragedy and mine alone.. \For everyone else who gathered for the occasion it was a day of joy --a celebration of tradition marking the continuity and rhythms of life; a day where the community joins the family, becomes family, and says, "Yes, this is good, this is right! Go, and live well, prosper, and may God bless you and be with you." Yes, this is what it meant for everyone else. But not for me.
How could it? I was facing my own death. Roxanne was and would remain my first and my best (indeed, my only) hope for happiness in life. Unbelievable, you say, but no, it has proven to be true. I never felt the way I felt for Roxanne for any other woman. I never wanted another woman the way I wanted her. I have never loved another. Not like that.
You may think, "Ah, a youthful foolishness. Such feelings are not real, they are only the result of an overly sensitive and romantic mind." I wish that were true. I know this for it has been proven out over the years. How many years? Forty? More than forty years.
No, the evidence was clear then as it is today, and looking at Roxanne in her beautiful white gown, her bridesmaids in their floral gowns, (how beautiful a sight it all was!) I knew then, what a tragedy was unfolding. Or rather, had unfolded, for Roxanne's marriage was the culmination of a series of events that pointed to this moment, that made this moment inevitable. Her marriage was no "accident," or an event in which I played no part. No indeed. I made it happen as sure as I stand here, remembering.
I did not breathe as Roxanne took the vow, with that new ring on her finger. It was not my hand that she held. It was not my ring that was slipped on her finger. And it was not my image that the congregation observed, and smiled at, and gave good wished to. I had to understand that. It was not easy.
A remarkable thing to experience really, the total and complete collapse of an illusion. The priest said, "I now pronounce you man and wife," and I felt something die in me. Or, I was aware that something had left my body. I had loved Roxanne so deeply with such surety and certainty that there seemed no escaping the inevitability of our sharing a life together. It had been all so clear in my mind: where we would live, what we would do, who our friends would be, where we would travel, our children, our future and growing old together. Then suddenly, nothing. None of it was to be. Not to be, not in this life, no, no. It was all a beautiful, beautiful dream. It still is, sadly.
And so, the couple were proclaimed man and wife, I forced myself to think, "This is best."
This practice I continued, day after day, year after rolling year saying, "This is best." And it was. But not for me. Again, for her, for her family, and she has a beautiful family, a family that SHOULD HAVE been mine. But, no, that is not true. It wasn't meant to be, so that is unfair and unrealistic to say, "It should have been mine." No, it should not have been mine. I could never have been. There was no power in the universe to have made it so. It was never real. Never a possibility. Never. God, in his wisdom, knew that.
The ceremony over, we proceeded to the party, the reception as it is called. I should not have gone. This was cruel, making me watch her dance with her new husband, her new husband's family, and friends, and I. . . I was not really there. I sat there, like a phantom, the dead, feeling dead, I sat, pretending to have a good time, pretending to be alive. Of course, I would never be alive again. Not fully.
Hoping against the reality of what I was feeling, I repeated, "There is something to be learned from this," "Something to make me grow and mature." I said this when it got too painful, when the joy of the revelers peaked now and then. I reassured myself, that I would be better for it. At least I tried. I tried. . . in vain. I could never be better for having lived through that tragedy. It is a lie that "what does not destroy me makes me stronger." A stupid, illogical lie.
Paying my respects to the Bride and Groom, I left, and began to breathe again. It was over. But was it? Would it ever be? No. Not for me. That moment would never be over for me; I would never really recover from that moment. How could I?
And so, I sit here, so many years later, alone, in the blessed darkness of night, the cold wind blowing hard against the windows, writing these words to you, to anyone who would care, with the hope that you might read them and understand. Try, please, to understand and pity me. Pity, and pray for me.
Now it is time to sleep.
Now it is time to sleep and dream of other things. other things. . . other things. . .
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