FicWad

ONE: I confess, I’m Messed Up

Here I am, at the moment that is supposed to be the happiest day of my life, and yet I am sitting on the toilet, my hair perfectly sitting on my shoulders, my face flawlessly covered in makeup, but no matter how perfect everything seems, I can’t bring myself to move. Is this a case of cold feet? Am I freaking out before my own wedding? Am I really making a mistake? But what is the mistake, that I am freaking out, or that I might not go through with this?
There is no question that I love him, I do, with all my heart, marriage to him would be perfect, it would be bliss, but here I am, crouched over this toilet, bitting my perfectly manicured finger nails wondering what it is exactly that I am about to get myself into.
Marriage;
–noun
1. The social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc.
2. The state, condition, or relationship of being married; wedlock: a happy marriage.
3. The legal or religious ceremony that formalizes the decision of a man and woman to live as husband and wife, including the accompanying social festivities: to officiate at a marriage.
4. A relationship in which two people have pledged themselves to each other in the manner of a husband and wife, without legal sanction: trial marriage; homosexual marriage.
5. Any close or intimate association or union: the marriage of words and music in a hit song.
6. A formal agreement between two companies or enterprises to combine operations, resources, etc., for mutual benefit; merger.
7. A blending or matching of different elements or components: The new lipstick is a beautiful marriage of fragrance and texture.
8. Cards. A meld of the king and queen of a suit, as in pinochle. Compare ROYAL MARRIAGE.
9. A piece of antique furniture assembled from components of two or more authentic pieces.
10. Obsolete. the formal declaration or contract by which act a man and a woman join in wedlock.

—Synonyms 3. Matrimony. Marriage, wedding, nuptials are terms for the ceremony uniting couples in wedlock. Marriage is the simple and usual term, without implications as to circumstances and without emotional connotations: to announce the marriage of a daughter. Wedding has rather strong emotional, even sentimental, connotations, and suggests the accompanying festivities, whether elaborate or simple: a beautiful wedding; a reception after the wedding. Nuptials is a formal and lofty word applied to the ceremony and attendant social events; it does not have emotional connotations but strongly implies surroundings characteristic of wealth, rank, pomp, and grandeur: royal nuptials. It appears frequently on newspaper society pages chiefly as a result of the attempt to avoid continual repetition of marriage and wedding. 5. Alliance, confederation; weld, junction.
—Antonyms 1. Divorce.
It’s not that I am striving for a perfect picket fence life; I am no longer naive enough to believe that it exists, but I want to know that I am not making a mistake right now. I need to be told that everything is going to be okay, that this is going to be the first day of the rest of my life, and that this is going to make us both happy.
Instead here I am, a nervous wreck, wringing my hands together, locked in the bathroom, trying to control my breathing. It’s not a mistake is it?
If I could pinpoint something in my life that made me the way I am right now I think I’d contemplate going back in time and fixing it. But therein lies the problem, I don’t think there is anything to pinpoint; I don’t think there was anything wrong with my childhood. It certainly wasn’t in any way shape or form normal, but there was nothing wrong about it.
I think the problem is with me. Shit, I can’t even begin to think of all the problems I have. I tried so hard to be perfect, to keep it all together. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn’t.
Whenever I think back to my childhood, I can’t think back to any event that didn’t have either severely negative emotions associated with it, or severely positive emotions, anything that was in-between feels like it has been erased from the memory database.
Whenever I think back on my family, I think of anything but normal, but then I get to thinking if the ‘normal’ family really exists, if people actually live like something portrayed in a movie. I know that my family was nothing like something portrayed in a movie, maybe a horror movie, or a comedy, but not a family movie. It had everything from alcoholics, self-centred brats, mental nut cases, sarcastic bitches, racist assholes, sexist pigs, the list is endless. The thing is, as annoying and dysfunctional as we could all be, no matter how crazy we got, we still had our moments of brilliance and bonding.
Then I suppose there was him. He was always there. He had always been a part of my life, be it through good or bad times, he was always there. I was thankful for that. I guess all that bullshit managed to help us get to here, today, to our wedding.
I was so nervous, so sure that something was not right, but I couldn’t pinpoint anything and I knew that this went way beyond ‘normal’ wedding nerves.

“Em?” a knock on the door startled me. “Em, are you okay?”

“I’m fine” I breathed. I don’t know how I was able to speak. “I just need a second...” That’s a lie. I think I need another lifetime.
I took a deep breath. I needed to know if this was the right choice, if this was going to work out. I don’t know if I could take another broken heart or another failure in my own life.
I only ever dreamt of getting married once, of doing all this once. Of course, then once it was done, I was supposed to grow old with my husband and we were going to live our lives together. That was my plan. I was scared that it was not going to go the way I wanted it to.

“Em, honey, we need to leave”, the door creaked open, “it’s time to leave”. I looked up at my best friend, dressed in her bridesmaid dress that took us forever to find. She smiled at me, a smile I knew all too well, it was a smile that put me a little at ease.

“Okay” I nodded. “Charlie is my makeup okay?” I asked. I hadn’t let myself cry yet, but I know that I was close.

“You look beautiful babe” she smiled at me, reaching out to help me up, fixing my veil. “Just wait until he sees you. He is going to be blown away”.

“Thanks” I replied, tugging at my dress. I guess there was no time like the present. With each step I took, my heart started to race, I could barely breathe. My head was swarming.

“There she is” smiled my mother as I walked behind Charlie from the bathroom. “There is the beautiful bride”, the look of pride in her eyes made my chest hurt.

“Thanks for finding her Charlotte” added my father. “We should get you two into the car and off to the church”. I just nodded. I was more than willing to be lead around and told what to do.
It took a team effort to get me into the car. It was an old, vintage care with leather seats. My dress didn’t want to co-operate, it took a few minutes to get inside the door. Charlotte climbed in next to me and before I knew it, we were moving. I felt sick.
We travelled in silence. A comfortable silence on her part, I just played with my hands. I watched the streets as we drove, these were the streets of my youth. We had spent our lives riding around these streets, chasing each other, avoiding each other, screaming at each other, kissing each other, all of it happened on these streets. These streets held so many memories. My breath caught in my throat as we passed by the local park. That park was a landmark in our lives, in all our lives.

*

“Promise you’ll be in my life forever?” he asked me, thunder growled in the night sky, I wanted to be home.

“I can’t promise that Pete” I replied, a gust of wind caused me to shiver in the night air. I could tell there was about to be a storm, a bad storm. I didn’t want to be caught outside when it broke.

“Promise me Em, I don’t want to spend a day without you in my life. You’re my best friend” he replied. He played with the frayed hole in his jeans, it was on his knee and I knew he had done it when he had fallen over. He was always doing something stupid and it never surprised me to see him on the ground.

“I can’t promise that Pete” I said again. “As long as we can both stand each other, I promise that we will be in each other’s lives. There is no telling where the future will take us”.

“I’d go anywhere as long as it was with you” he said to his feet. We were sitting on the grass, right next to the oldest, tallest tree in the whole park. We had spent our childhood climbing this tree. “I love you Em” he whispered. A loud clap of thunder broke over the top of us, making me jump. I could feel drops of rain starting to fall from the sky.

“Pete I think we should go” I replied, getting to my feet. I hated storms, they scared me and had ever since I was a small child, just because I was 17 didn’t mean the fear was gone.

“Em...” Pete got up to meet me. Even being as short as he was, he still had an inch on me. He grabbed my hand. “Em, I love you. It’s always been you”. It started to rain harder.

“Pete...I...” I didn’t really know what to say. All I did know was that I didn’t want to be stuck in this storm. The thunder interrupted me again. “Please Pete, can we go inside?” I asked, the fear slightly evident in my voice. He pulled me close.
“I won’t let anything hurt you” he whispered to me, pushing my hair form my face. The rain was so hard I couldn’t see very far into the distance. “I won’t ever let anything hurt you” he repeated to me, I looked up at him. He moved his hand to my waist and pulled me even closer, pressing his soft lips to mine. Lightening raced through the night sky, but I didn’t notice, I didn’t care. He was kissing me right now and that was all that mattered.
It seemed like a lifetime passed before he pulled away, once again pushing my hair from my face. He interlocked our hands, pulling me against him. “We better get out of this rain” he smiled at me. I couldn’t help but smile in return.

"Please" I shivered, grasping his hand tightly.

Author's Note:
So, a brand new story. :)
Okay, so just to be clear, this is obviously going to have a few flashbacks in it, I'll try to break it up with "*", or in some cases italicise it, or when in doubt label it. Strap yourselves in, because here begins another journey. :)
-xo