Virgin

Coming back to conversations, loosely related: her upbeat tone into the psychiatric ward's payphone: I need to invest in healthy relationships.

Seeing the Instagram post of her sister-in-law's wedding. I wasn't invited. When the sister-in-law had asked me how I was doing, back when you could meet for a friendly brunch and ha ha mimosas all around, I stared at her engagement ring, smiling like a savage promise and that I would never have that happiness, and told her I was doing, just great, thanks so much for asking. No exclamation point. It's beside the point.

When I had told Stephanie I was going to get better in the hospital, there was some pause on the other end of the line, like a polite grasp at what I could possibly mean. It couldn't be true. It also didn't seem true, just hours later, when she showed up with her fiance, at the psych ward, to see me. I sat in glasses and pajamas, the pity obvious, as it always is and will be, behind their pretending eyes. How are you, she asked. I don't know, I said. There's someone here who thinks God watches us and will ask him to be the second Jesus.

If you're getting confused as to who the fiances and sister-and-laws are in this story, that should be fine. It's great, even. My little regard, at least back before Covid, for engaged and married "young" people was rife. I interchanged all of them in my mind, a little merry-go-round of Perfect People And Their Perfect Relationships. Cause for vomiting. When Stephanie had tried on her wedding dress, I stood in the photos, wearing sneakers and a baggy flannel shirt. I looked chubby.

Shortly after these photos, I stood in my room, having been dumped by - shocker - a guy I really, really liked. I took out a blade. Am I not good enough? Why? Is something wrong with me?

But of course there was, is. Something unfixable, and very, very wrong.

His name was not Jared, but that's what I'll call him. When he told me he was seeing someone else, in a coffee shop that I thought had been just another date, I stared at him for so long that I could see his face fall. I have never before or since seen the realization so slowly cross someone's face, or perhaps it was in slow-motion, that the ending the conversation was not going as planned, and there was no way out but to stumble upon some extremely sorry, bullshit conclusion.

I went to Urgent Care and asked for bandaids. They called the cops, and I sat in a sterile room, with emotions far from that, explaining that work has been overwhelming, you know the feeling? They did, and they told me to take care of myself.

I haven't, before or since.

At the end of the day, I wasn't invited to that wedding posted on Instagram. I will always be the girl, with a greasy face in glasses, being wrong, about everything and everyone. I will forever be estranged from my sister Stephanie, who told me that I am not my disease. However, this is far from true, and always will be. I have not been hospitalized for the last time. I will go again, and again, to the ward of second Jesus'.

While all the girl's of the world try on their wedding dresses, I am in a white hospital gown, a virgin to romance.