Enjoy the Silence

I've been promising this for awhile... and here it is.....

Title: Wedding Invitations

Author: Sweetness (ficathon@yahoo.com)

Notes: This is the prologue to my semi-autobiographical original fiction that I am working on.

Feedback: It would be nice but not necessary.

            The one thing that I hate about being single is receiving wedding invitations. They arrive in the mail in their cream or white or beige envelopes and accuse me of being single. I am not ashamed of being single, in fact I enjoy not having to answer to someone else’s desires or wishes or wants. But when I get a wedding invitation in the mail, I am suddenly reduced to a quivering mass of shame, especially when I see the words in their heavy black script: “You and a guest are cordially invited.” As if I have a guest and I just don’t feel comfortable going to a wedding alone. The next few weeks are spent in a panic trying to find some suitable male to attend the wedding with me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want the guy to act as if he’s my boyfriend, it’s just that I don’t feel comfortable showing up alone to be surrounded by a sea of couples. Our society says that it’s okay to be a single woman but at the same time people look at you and whisper.

            My hunt for the suitable male guest usually fizzles out due to lack of interest. I just can’t be bothered to find someone to go with me, especially if it’s a family wedding. So I usually end up calling my best friend, Janelle, and inviting her to go with me. But what was once acceptable when I was in my early twenties is just starting to look like something else. The whispers aren’t about me going to a wedding alone, now they’re about my sexuality and whether Janelle and I’ve been hiding the truth about us for so many years. What was once acceptable in my early twenties is now unacceptable and questionable. After all I am almost thirty, shouldn’t I be settling down and getting married?

            Personally, I don’t really care about what they say. Let them whisper about me behind their hands, but sometimes just sometimes when I get a wedding invitation in it’s impeccable cream or white or beige heavy envelope and it’s thick black script inviting me and my guest to attend the marriage of someone’s daughter to somebody else’s son, it gets to me and I care. And I end up lying awake and obsessing over my single status in a sea of couples.