I sat on the floor of my closet. It was a summer when I still felt like a child, but wanted to be a grownup. I sat on the floor of my closet, resting on the clean carpet, sorting through old school memories. I can see the spot where I once spilled a bottle on glue and my teddy bear got stuck for a few days. That teddy bear is in the closet somewhere. Tipped over boxes flood half of my bedroom with yearbooks, photographs, study guides, and homework from elementary through middle school. Just barely a teenager the summer before sophomore year of high school, my head was full of big dreams to make a movie and go on road trips with friends who had just gotten their drivers licenses. These big adventures were still out of reach, but I was finding other adventures. Adventures through texting and what I thought was falling in love.
That day sitting on the floor of my closet, pretending I was too grown up to hold onto childhood toys and school papers, I was texting a girl. She had told me no more than two months before that she would be in Montana for the summer instead of five minutes from my home in Minnesota. We were friends at the time, but nothing special. We didn’t go to school together anymore, and I had never been to her house like you assume best friends do. I was mostly sad that she wouldn’t be around for the movie I wanted to make. I had no idea that when she left we would start texting almost constantly, and I would learn so much about myself that summer.
By July, we were a thing. Maybe not a dating thing or in-love thing because we were so many states apart and neither of us had told anyone else what we were up to. We were in high school, and I didn’t know how to talk about love and relationships yet. But we were a thing. A text from morning to night thing. A sending messages because something made us think of the other thing. A counting down the days to being in the same state again thing. This was my first relationship, so I didn’t really know what dating was like and especially not long-distance dating.
All I knew was that it was an amazing feeling to have someone I could tell everything to and plan a future with. It just happened that this person was also a girl.
I don’t remember much of the text message conversation that day on my closet floor except for the red wedding dress. I knew this girl wasn’t traditional, and she was gay so that was already pushing the boundaries of my teenage mind and our world at the time. When she told me that she wanted to get married in a red dress, I didn’t even question it. It was our normal. I thought she would be beautiful. The more we talked, the more I could see the vibrant red dress on her soft body, and I saw myself as slim and beautiful in a white dress.
The funny part was that I don’t remember being the little girl that dreamed of a big wedding and a princess ball gown. I don’t remember planning out a dream wedding until I met someone that made me think about myself as a bride.
A red wedding dress was a new idea for me, but it must have been done somewhere before. The next logical step in my mind was assuming that this red wedding dress would be for our wedding someday. We would be high school sweethearts, childhood best friends separated after middle school but in love nonetheless. I could see myself as a beautiful bride in white, holding hands with my beautiful bride in red. We messaged about where she had seen red wedding dresses before. She never gave me a reason why she wanted one so bad, and I don’t think I ever asked. We both just agreed that that would be the way things were for us. I felt content in the deepest way, like nothing could make me feel like I was floating higher or ever bring me down again. I sat on the floor of my closet, firmly planted in a crisscross-applesauce position, but feeling like I was reaching for the sun and moon and clouds and stars.
I sat on the floor of my closet, making no progress on sorting through the boxes. I was distracted by the thought of weddings and learning how to fall in love. I thought this rush and attention was what falling in love was. Accepting the fact that my girlfriend wanted a red wedding dress was just part of my love story. Like the ones you hear in radio pop and country songs.
I thought falling in love meant never falling out of love.
I wonder how many other people she talked to about a red wedding dress.