To my first love; for your Wedding Day

I guess congratulations are in order. I wish you the best in your new life together and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

It seems that it was a beautiful day, from what I can see in the pictures. It looks that everything was perfect which is exactly what you always deserved anyway. Your parents look very happy too, I can see that your mother changed her hair colour, I remember how she was thinking about doing that for years and your father looks so proud of you. It was always very special the way he looked at you, even during the times when you would lose your car keys, twice in a week.

Those things don’t matter though – look at you, all grown up. So different from the person I met but you still share the same eyes with your old self. She is beautiful too, I remember thinking that the first day you introduced me to her. Has it been that long? Maybe that’s why I never got an invitation, because the person that got married wasn’t the person I knew.

I have been waiting for that wedding invitation for years. Deep down I knew about a year after you two were together – maybe it was a gut feeling, a lucky guess, but apparently got this one right. I pictured that day, how would I feel and how would I react, what would I say and was constantly surprising myself with my answers.

I dreaded this even more so when we lost contact, I dreaded and at the same time hoped that you would reach out and remember me in your happiest moment. I guess I was wrong. We weren’t there for each other at our darkest; why would we be there at our brightest? It seems quite strange but I think this is one of those things that you don’t know how it will hit you until the very end. Just like when the news of your engagement reached me, people whom I had not talked to for a while wanted to check up on me, to see how I was dealing with it.

The engagement hit harder than the wedding for some reason, probably because the wedding I had some time to digest, but the engagement happened just as I figured out that you had no intention of keeping in touch and maybe that disappointed me a little. It might be my fault after all for telling the truth in a long travelled letter but I can’t be found guilty for speaking out three little words and not asking something in return. But I wasn’t angry, I was disappointed for seeing what we had actually become, that we were in fact nothing but a fading memory. That my first love, my friend –after all that happened, after all those years– had hidden me and slowly forgotten about me so much that he didn’t even consider my name in his list of wedding guests.

If I had been there I would’ve felt proud; my greatest wish for you would’ve come true and that was to see you happy. I would react exactly like the little sister you made me out to be, happy and content thinking that your chosen one is right because you picked her and I would tell you how much I loved you and that wouldn’t even be in the romantic way but in the filial and honest way I have always spoken to you.Now he is a man, a married man and there are no words that can define the joy this gives me.

But I never did get the wedding invitation, so I’m stuck pouring my words on paper, embracing the possibility that they may reach you and anger you further one day. If they do, you must forgive me for that was not what I wanted, what I did want was to be there. I wanted to be the family you once saw in me, I wanted this bond we said we had to be stronger and that we could hold and congratulate each other in times of family, love, beauty and fulfilment.

I think a simple ‘Congratulations’ would’ve sufficed but I get so lost when it comes to what is wrong and what is right to tell you that I tend to multiply my words.

Congratulations then to you and your wife, I hope that all the happiness in the world comes to you at your doorstep and that maybe one day if we are to meet again it would be like I was at your wedding too, as part of the guests, thinking about how much you deserve to forever have that smile on your lips.