weddings make me sad

I get really sad after weddings. Like, really sad. Ugly cry sad.

Don’t get me wrong – I love a black and white checkered dance floor and a band covering Earth, Wind, and Fire as much as the next person. Maybe even more. I count down the minutes until it’s time to celebrate my friends’ big day – and I love love. I love celebrating love. But it’s also true that celebrating love is kind of a stealthy reminder that I don’t have it yet.

Part of me feels really weird for saying this out loud, but I know for a fact that this isn’t just me. I have a pack of single friends who all check on each other the day after we see bridesmaid or guest-of-a-wedding antics on someone else’s IG story. It’s an equation. First, all of the joy, turned all the way up. Then, the sadness and the grief and the loneliness come knocking.

I say this with love, but if I hear one more person say that “love comes when you stop looking for it” or that “everything happens for a reason” I really may lose it. Thank you for sharing. Those Pinterest platitudes aren’t entirely helpful in the moment that you’re at the singles’ table watching everyone and their plus ones sway back and forth to an Al Green love ballad. To be fair, any of the couples I’m watching would probably tell me a lovely story about how they met as soon as they’d sworn off dating forever or hated each other at first, or how looking back now they see how “God blessed the broken road” which in some cases, is the token dance-floor clearing a la couples’ skate song playing from the iPod when the band takes a break.

Now, let us recall my earlier statement that I love love. I really do. I believe that love is a real thing. I’m not this disillusioned woman, burned by her past and exes who’s calling bullshit on anything. It’s just that getting an invitation with a plus one when you don’t have a plus one is a special kind of stomach drop. “Bring a buddy, find a wedding date” – not the point, my friends. I’m not complaining about getting a plus one (and I even think not getting a plus one can elicit the same feelings); it’s always so appreciated and generous, and also another sneaky reminder – that we haven’t found our forever people. Which is not to ever make happy couples feel guilty, like their joy is actually a downer for some people crowded around the dance floor – it’s just a feeling that comes, and we have to honor it. We honor the joy, and we honor the sadness and the grief and loneliness. All of it’s valid. All of that is around the dance floor, too.

Which is why I cry during first dances. Half of it is because joy is bursting out of me in tear form, and the other half is that part of me wonders if I’ll ever have one of those. This may sound melodramatic to Susan, who’s about dance to Rascal Flatts with her high school sweetheart turned long-time husband (and who would probably be the one to give me the “29 is so young! You have your whole life ahead of you!” speech. There’s always one). But even if Susan is right, being alone is a real fear and a valid discomfort that I encounter holding that wine glass, waiting on the father-daughter dance, the cake cutting and smearing, the bouquet toss. And I know I’m not the only one standing there in her Rent the Runway gown or suit and tie thinking about all of this.

So I have a system. Whenever my happy-for-the-happy-couple-but-ohmygod-if-I’m-“so-great”-then-why-am-I-still-alone hangover hits, I either call my friend Colleen or Claire.

“I have a great life. I love my work, I love my friends, I enjoy my own company. My dogs are awesome. I can totally be the cool aunt to all 14 of y’alls’ babies,” I’ll say, assuring myself, like I’m signing a prudent insurance policy at the intersection of forced independence and settling.

But they both know this is just me saying that I need a little permission to feel. I call Colleen because a year ago, she was the one calling me saying the same thing, so I know she gets it. And I call Claire because she’s in the same boat with me right now. They have the rap sheets I’m looking for in  post-wedding phone-a-friends.

I need reminders that it isn’t selfish to feel two conflicting feelings. Being sad at a wedding doesn’t cancel out the elation that two of my people are calling their love a forever thing. I can be happy for that, and sad for myself. I can be proud of the life I’ve built up til now as a single 29-year-old, and also grieve that I’m a single 29-year-old. I’m allowed to feel both. We’re allowed to celebrate on full blast and mourn deeply at the same time. You don’t have to pick one. You’re allowed to not pick one.

Because I also know that it isn’t just weddings, either. It’s about buying houses and getting promotions and whatever the next milestone is. It’s about having someone missing around the dinner table. It’s about whatever your thing is that you hurt from wanting so badly, especially when someone else invites you to a party about theirs. And in moments like that, I think you have to call your Colleens and your Claires. I think you have to find who will give you the permission slip to buy the thing off the baby registry and then go home and cry because it looks like it’s a long way off before you’ll be cradling one of your own. The one who reminds you that you can dress to the nines for the engagement party and 100% feel the joy of that moment, and then 100% need to go home and put on sweatpants and have hold some space for wondering when your day will come. The one who says, “I see you and I hear you, and hold space for you to feel all of this together. You don’t have to pick one.”

We have no choice but to call in our people on this stuff. I think sometimes it is enough to let the people who love us believe in something for us when we don’t have the faith to believe in it for ourselves. Like a manifestation by proxy, if you believe in that stuff. Otherwise, I think you just call it love. I’ve waved the white flag on trying to do life any other way. I would much rather have people rush in than sit in a room with sadness and grief and loneliness by myself any longer than I have to – and I do have to, for some time. I have to feel them to name them, and I have to name them to learn something from them.

Maybe Susan is right about me and my life and my love story. Maybe everything does happen for a reason, and maybe I’ll be thinking that during a slow dance at a black tie thing sooner rather than later. The point is, I don’t have a clue right now. But I do have a Colleen and a Claire, and I’m hoping you do, too – for whatever is bringing you sadness and grief and loneliness. Call one of them. Call them ten times a day, and open the door on that stuffy room thinking of all the reasons why you won’t have the life you’re dreaming of. Call them today. Call them right now.