Fourth wedding this month and I ended up sitting in the parking lot for 14 minutes before I could make myself walk back inside.
It wasn’t even a sad wedding. Groom’s college roommate, open bar, decent band, nothing that should’ve set anything off. I was fine all through the ceremony. Then somewhere around the toasts my chest just went tight, out of nowhere, and I had to excuse myself to the bathroom and then out to the car, where I sat with the engine off just breathing for a while.
This is apparently wedding season for everyone I know. Two in September, this one, and there’s another in 3 weeks that I’m already dreading more, because the bride is someone I used to sit next to at work every day, and the odds of running into people who’d actually notice if I disappeared for 14 minutes are a lot higher than they were tonight.
I’ve been trying this thing from the sessions where you sit with whatever’s happening for a second instead of stuffing it down and smiling through the rest of dinner, which is what old me would’ve done. Old me would’ve powered through, had two more glasses of wine, driven the 90 minutes home with the radio up loud enough not to think about it, and called that handled.
This time I made myself actually name what was going on instead of blaming my allergies, which is my go-to excuse apparently.
Turns out it wasn’t really about the wedding at all. It was more that this is the fourth one since August, stacked on top of a job where I’m in the car 3 hours a day round trip, and somewhere in the middle of all that I stopped doing a single thing that was just mine. The garden’s been the tell, honestly. I used to go out every evening after work, even if it was only 10 minutes, and this week I think I made it out there twice.
Anyway. I went back in. Ate the cake. Talked to people. Drove home with the windows down instead of the radio blasting, which felt strange, in a way I can’t really explain.
Not looking for anyone to tell me what any of this means, I just wanted to put it somewhere other than in my own head for once, because that’s usually where it sits and turns into something I end up snapping at my husband about 3 days later over absolutely nothing related.
Going to try to get out to the tomatoes before work tomorrow if I can actually manage waking up early enough for once.