I Should be Attending my Wedding Right Now

… But instead, I’m enjoying my sweet, sweet liberty from a tyrant.

My doctor appointment was at 2:30 pm in Jacksonville. A new doctor, and I was unsure about going. Not because of the doctor herself, but because of the weather. My first tornado warning since moving to Arkansas. It was just for a few counties, and would be for only an hour or so.

Thirty minutes into the consultation we were taking cover. Ten minutes after that the power cut out. It rained and thundered, and the wind was horrifyingly strong. Calls from my brother in law, an EMT, indicated that it had already wiped out one town nearby. Others in the room received phone calls telling them the same thing. Then it went quiet. For three hours I stayed there, waiting for the doctor with the HAM radio to give us the all clear. All bridges back across the river to my apartment were closed off. Unstable, or covered in debris.

When I finally stepped outside the office, it was like stepping into a disaster movie. All roads out of Jacksonville were closed. Ambulances and firetrucks everywhere. No traffic signals, so the roads were anarchy. My sister had to guide me home on the phone. Thank God the phone towers were not damaged too badly, and I had a full charge.

Hard to believe that was three months ago now. It’s August 19th.

A short walk down the path at my apartment comes to a golf course and tornado debris. The sun is shining and there’s a warm late-summer breeze tinged with wonder of fall and new beginnings. Some golf carts skate down the path across the fence from the bike path I’m walking. You’d think by now the tornado debris would be all picked up and cleared out. Trees are still torn to shreds, and falling apart. Piles of brush still linger in the ditches of the street. But it still looks like lush Arkansas. Vines and ivy are living their best life. Trees are vibrant with green leaves. They are broken and fallen, but still thrive.

But folks don’t seem to mind the debris. It’s a good day to go outside. A good day for a wedding.

The middle of August was always associated with the beginning of school. All those years attending Drury University made August magical. Now that I’ve graduated, August has a different kind of magic. It’s the closing of one chapter and the opening of another. It was to be a bright, shiny chapter for both of us, but instead it was the closing of a painfully short chapter for me. My gossip connections across state lines said they saw him with another girl a week after we broke up. It was the Monday before Memorial Day when he told me I wasn’t good enough.

So, here I sit on the back porch of my apartment looking across the Arkansas River at Pinnacle Mountain in the distance writing the first draft of what you are currently reading. The water lapping at the bank, and the birds chirping, and the wind rustling through the leaves, and the cicadas singing. Arkansas has never sounded so good before. The magic has always been here, waiting for me to realize that it is all I need.

I turn on some tunes from YouTube and get to writing. “End of Summer Playlist” sounds appealing. I am not incorrect. If I can just get these thoughts out of my head and on paper, they won’t pester me anymore. So I feel, and I feel, and I feel.

It’s 9 am, and I would be getting my hair and makeup done.

The agony of that phone call turns and tightens my stomach even now. Despairing and hopeless at the sound of his empty voice telling me we were breaking up. Not compatible. I have experienced depression before. Full of empty is the only way I can describe it. In an instant, I was engulfed in empty. This wasn’t my first rodeo of broken dreams, and probably wouldn’t be my last. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, and there was nothing I could say to make him stay. He had made up his mind months ago to leave a trail of destruction in my life, and that is precisely what he did. I was “ugly” crying for hours until my sister came to pick me up so I could stay with her for the night and I wouldn't have the chance to do the unthinkable.

I often wonder if the last time we were together he knew it would be the last time. I never knew the power of a man to make me feel beautiful and ugly until I met him. Unreasonably high were his standards for everything in his life, including if not especially, for me. I went “all out” whenever we were together. Full face of makeup, pretty dresses I wore just for him, fixing my hair with ringlet curls just how he liked. When I look back on the photos we took together, I don’t recognize myself.

It’s 11 am, and we would be arriving at the church now. Taking photos that would last a lifetime.

I still have most of the photos we took together. They pop up on my phone from time to time when I’m searching for a recent photo I took. The “memories” feature on my phone is a curse. Why do I still have them? To remind myself how stupid I was for not seeing him as he truly was? To remind myself that it all really did happen at all and wasn’t just a silly dream or nightmare?

The only photos I take now are for my dating profiles. I’ve been on four different dating apps so far. One only lasted 24 hours before I couldn’t handle it anymore. Buncha losers. I get it, we’re all out here searching for apocalypse partners, but do ya really have to start with, “Who’d ya vote for in 2016?”

It’s 1 pm, and we would be preparing for the First Look, wedding presents for each other in hand.

I never picked out his gift, but he said he had mine already sorted when we broke up. I had given him gifts before though. For his birthday, I gave him a grill set and a picnic blanket, as he had told me he had never gone on a picnic before. For Valentines, I have him a Lego set with a figurine of him and one of me. I sent him little love notes with stickers and everything so he could open one whenever he started to miss me. I gave him my everything.

The next morning, I told my sister that it felt like I was thinking with a whole new brain. The heartbreaking phone call had awoken me from my love spell. No longer under the curse, I could see clearly that he was a liar, and a good one. He had fooled everyone. Even my grandmother, who doesn’t like a lot of people, had been won over by him.

It’s 3 pm and we would be saying our vows to each other now.

I wonder if I can get over it as quickly as he seemed to. Perhaps not. It’s August after all, and he broke it off in May. They’re probably planning their wedding now. The suspicion that he had another one on the side had overcome me, and I asked him about it. He denied of course. Anyone would. But I wasn’t able to shake the intuition that I was not the only one he was talking to.

He told me in that phone call he wasn’t sure if he really loved me, but also couldn’t say what love to him felt like. How do you not know whether or not you love someone? How is it possible that it is complicated? Perhaps it was not that complicated. He was looking at a life with someone else, and grasping at a way out.

It’s 5 pm and we would be riding off into the sunset now.

In disasters, natural and emotional, my family has guided me through difficult times. I thank God for them every day. The same trees along the walking path by my apartment that have been gnarled by destruction, are the same trees with leaves today. If they can survive destruction of that magnitude and still find the capability to thrive, then so can I.