I hate weddings. I hate the effort, the cost and the stress that comes with it. But most of all I hate the falseness, and how that falseness is fuelled by everyone in attendance. How solemn vows are shared with so little thought. How beautiful speeches are given to those in attendance with promises made to never stop loving, caring and trying to please the other. All those words ring hollow in time and are shown for the sham they are.
Of course I am not the best advocate of marriage. Not when the man who’d directed such wonderful sentiments at me a decade ago clearly didn’t mean them, shown by him leaving me for the younger, fitter strumpet from work. And in doing so, leaving me to raise the children we’d had together alone.
The fact that his new marriage was seemingly perfect, and that he’d had another child, made my own singledom rankle even more.
I’d warned my sister of such things but had, perhaps rightfully, been told I was bitter. Five years of loneliness would do that to anyone though, especially as my tenuous grasp to my mid thirties was starting to slip.