When the Wind Changes

My jeans are loose and my breasts are smaller. They worry me, and I tell at least three people at the wedding.

"But they're so much smaller than they used to be!" I complain while my mum smirks in the kitchen. She is making spicy tea. "Why aren't you saying anything, don't you feel bad for me?"

"They're fine, and you should stop worrying about silly things."

She's right, of course. I still have a handful, but I kind of liked them when they were fuller.

It is the night after my cousin's wedding, and the family sits in a circle on the living room floor, going over the events of the day, talking about the "we should haves" and the "I can't believes". I sit with my sister and cousin on the outskirts of the circle, half listening, and mostly wondering when the black spot of blood on my toe from a toe stub a couple of years ago will grow out.

We are tired, changed out of our wedding clothes, undone of our wedding hair and ready to sleep. The wedding itself had been wonderful: the hall decorations were breathtakingly beautiful, and everything had been almost seamlessly planned, and the food was delicious (save for the lack of dessert, which, especially for me, was most disappointing). Although it did get a bit tiring towards the end, coupled with the mini family reunion, it was all thoroughly enjoyable.

I only had one qualm, well, maybe two - but my main one was the bawling of eyes out as the bride was leaving. Perhaps it is the recent passing of my grandmother that has made me this way, but I stood with a furrowed brow wondering what the point was of her parents and sister crying as she left the house (no, not crying, bawling like somebody had died) to move in virtually next door.

"Why bother getting married if you're just going to cry?" I asked my dad. "It's your wedding, you're supposed to be happy, not bawling your eyes out. Nobody's died."

He thinks that if I get married, I will cry too. I can't see this happening.

I realised something then: I'm not ready to get married, and I don't know if I ever will be. It seems to me that people even one or two years older than me are more mature than I will be in ten years. Maybe it is not the case, but in my eyes, weddings are for big people, mature people. I'm probably wrong, of course, but I feel that marriage implies a greater level of maturity and responsibility, something I am not ready for yet, nor will I be for a long time. In these affairs, I am only a kid who wants the helium balloon at the end of it all.

Random thoughts pop in and out of my head over the weekend, very brief random thoughts, but mostly, for at least one day, I am free. Free from university work, free from looking at my mobile phone waiting for messages and calls, free from worrying about the whys and why nots of situations surrounding my life.

The weather is glorious on the morning that I am leaving, and I sit in the back seat of the taxi that is driving me to the airport with the window wound all the way down, letting the wind blow through my hair. I'm glad that I am not sharing the taxi with anyone, because I don't know many people who would appreciate this wind through their hair the same way I am doing at that moment (mostly, for them, it's about keeping the hair "respectable").

I feel happy.

In the airport bookshop, I am annoyed because I know at some point I have bought all of Ben Elton's books, but now only know the whereabouts of four of them. In a moment of greed I consider buying them all again, but save myself $80 by buying a computer magazine instead.

Suddenly, I am anxious to get home. All too quick the hour passes, and I have arrived, greeted with dreary cold weather, I feel my mood hinder slightly.

I crave him like I crave pumpkin pie. But is it even possible to crave something you've never had?

Things don't make sense right now: they hardly ever do, but somehow I know that everything is okay.

I am (still) happy, despite the wind, the rain and the bitter cold.

I am home, and tomorrow is another day.

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