Okay so I'm sitting here in the dark and everyone else is asleep, snoring actually, and the wedding was beautiful and my sister looked so happy but I just keep thinking about this one thing and it’s eating at me, you know? Like it was a three-day thing, this whole destination wedding, which is a lot already, and I was in the bridal party and a bridesmaid and I was supposed to be all smiles and support and I did, I did smile and I did support and I posed for a thousand pictures and made small talk with all these strangers who were somehow related or friends of friends and it was just this constant performance but then there was the suite. The suite. Like the hotel suite, which was huge, but they put five of us in there. Five. My sister, the bride, and then me and our cousin Sarah and then two aunts, Aunt Carol and Aunt Jean, and it was supposed to be fun, like a slumber party, but it was just… loud. And cramped. And someone was always in the bathroom and someone was always talking on the phone and someone was always asking where their charger was or if anyone had seen their hairspray and I was just trying to keep it together, you know? Trying to be the good sister and the good aunt and the good bridesmaid, smiling and nodding and saying “oh isn’t she lovely” a million times. And the whole time I’m thinking about my apartment, my little place downtown that I worked my whole life for, and how quiet it is and how I can just sit there and not have to be anything for anyone and I just wanted to be there. I kept thinking about my comfy chair and my book and how much I just wanted to be alone but you can’t say that, can you? You can’t say “I love you all but I desperately need to be alone right now” because that just makes you sound like a crank, and especially not at your sister’s wedding, and so I just kept smiling and nodding and making sure everyone had their mimosa. But then it was the second night, after the rehearsal dinner, and everyone was getting ready for bed and Aunt Carol was talking about her new hip and Aunt Jean was telling us about her neighbor’s cat and Sarah was showing us pictures of her kids and I just felt this… this wave, I guess, of all these years and all these choices and all these things I never did because I was always being the good sister or the good daughter or the good aunt and I just felt so tired. Like profoundly tired, not just sleep-deprived but bone-deep tired of being the person everyone expects me to be. And then the moment happened. It was late, really late, and everyone was finally quiet and I thought I could just slip away, just go out to the balcony and breathe for a minute and nobody would notice, but then my sister, she rolled over and she said “You know, I’m so glad we got this suite, it’s so much fun having everyone together” and she sounded so genuinely happy and my heart just did this weird thing, like a little jolt, and I just smiled at her in the dark and said “Me too, sis, me too” and it was a lie. A total lie. And I felt awful. Like, really awful. Because she was happy and I was there for her and I was doing all the things and I *should* have been happy, I should have been thrilled to be surrounded by family and celebrating love and all that, but all I could think about was my quiet apartment and the fact that I just wanted to be anywhere but there, crammed in with four other people, pretending to be delighted by every single second. Is that horrible? Am I a terrible person for feeling that way? Anyone else ever just want to escape their own family, even when you love them? It’s just… I’m getting to that age, you know? Where you start looking back more than forward and you wonder if you did it right, if you lived your life the way you should have and you see everyone else with their big families and their houses full of people and I have my little apartment and my quiet and sometimes it feels like a victory and sometimes it feels like… what did I miss? And then I lie to my sister at her wedding because I can’t handle the togetherness and I just feel like a fraud. And now I’m here, typing this in the dark, and everyone is still asleep and probably dreaming happy wedding dreams and I’m just wondering how to shake this feeling. Like, I know it’s over, the wedding’s done, I can go home tomorrow and be alone again but this feeling, this kind of hollow ache, it’s still here. And I just keep replaying that moment, her saying that, and me lying, and I just want to know if it’s okay. To feel that way. To just want to be alone so badly that you lie to the people you love. Or am I just completely messed up?