The whole truth - Part 2

I waited on the couch that evening for my sister to get home. When she saw me on the couch she asked,

“What are you doing home?”

Me: “I just took the day off to work on a few things”

Sister: “Oh, that’s nice. How are you? How is The Ex?”

Me: “Things are okay. He’s okay.”

Sister: “That’s good. So Wendy, when are we sending out your wedding invitations? Don’t they need to go out soon?”

Me: “Um… why don’t we talk about that after dinner, okay?”

Sister: “What do you mean? What’s going on? Wendy… are you still engaged?!”

I held up my left hand. I’d taken the ring off as soon as I could and she just stared at it.

Me: “Let’s talk after dinner and I will tell you all about it.”

All through dinner she was watching me. There was a very awkward silence throughout and as soon as she’d eaten enough she asked if we could go and talk now. We went up to her room and plunked down on the bed.

Sister: “What’s going on?”

For the next hour I went over a briefer version of what had happened. I left out the part about the affair, for the time being, but I gave her all of the other details. I told her that I was really sorry I hadn’t said anything before but I knew she had been very busy and stressed out about her work; I hadn’t wanted to add to that stress. She was okay with this and was very understanding. After sharing with her some of what had been going on she was really angry with The Ex, I felt a bit guilty about that based on the not sharing about the affair, but she was my sister and I needed her. We hugged and then talked about other things. It was still good to tell her what had happened. She had to get ready to go out with her friends, so I was helping her pick out her outfit when the phone rang. It was for me! One of my high school friends was calling my parents to get my cell phone number and luckily I was home. She was trying to get a group of us together for drinks at our favourite place that night. It was the perfect opportunity for me to break the news to my friends all at once. I’d already let BFF2 and BFF1 know, as well as a few of my friends in Toronto, but I had yet to let my high school friends know what was going on. It was then my turn to get ready and off I went.

When I got there everyone had already arrived except for BFF1. I sat down and started the conversation, “Before we get started I wanted to share something with everyone so that we can move on to happier things. Last weekend The Ex and I broke up. We’ve called off the wedding.”

Dead silence.

Then my one friend said, “Wendy, are you serious? You’re joking right?!”

Me: “I’m really sorry. I’m not. It just came to a point and we couldn’t do it anymore.”

More silence and then, same friend: “Wow. I had no idea you were so unhappy! You guys were so perfect together, what happened?!”

Her comment about being perfect stung a little. It’s true that The Ex and I presented the world with this happy, outgoing, fun couple and it made me exceedingly sad to know that it had all been fake. We had been pretending for months and months. Her comment made me realize how far I was from the real me.

I shared a bit more about what had happened (leaving out the affair for the moment) and they all nodded. My friends all offered me their support and we thankfully moved on to other topics. It was really nice to listen to how well everyone was doing.

My day of truths had ended on a high note and when I got home that night I officially changed my status on Facebook from “Engaged” to “Single”. It was on Facebook, there was no turning back now ;)