First Married

She got married in our grandmother’s dress. I was wearing purple. Something I’d only do for her. She was so happy, I was so jealous. T****, my older smarter, taller, thinner, more beautiful, more brilliant, more everything cousin, was radiant. Smiles and tremors and delight. We were putting on make up and I asked her how she knew she loved him. She said they were a team that were comfortable together mutually dependent and independent at the same time. At fourteen, I felt like the dumpy younger sister who had to be forced to show up and a few years later would have her own wedding; for S***** the witnesses would be a justice of the peace and her best friend as she married the boy we never met. T****’s was everything her mother and our gramma could wish for, extravagant by our family’s standards. Traditional, feminine, and modern and brusque at the same time. We did our own make up, made our own dresses, did everything but write the invitations. Now, six years later, the marriage, upon which I have based all of my hope for true love, is crumbling. What am I supposed to do with the mess? I have no doubt that Tirza will find someone who suits her. She is beautiful and smart and shy and assertive. She is Dr. T**** L***** of the South Carolina L*****s, daughter of the State Archaeologist and a Doctor of Philosophy in psychology. She is perfect. Everything a man can dream of. If she has no chance of happiness than I am even worse off. I who have no skills. I who should have been born in another century. I who have only ever wanted to be married and raising children. What are I, and those like me, to do?