Picking up my wedding dress from the cleaner was both exciting and emotional.  I’d been wanting to have it back but as we waited while the cleaner fetched my dress I noticed a sample dress in a display box and anxiety hit.  I didn’t want my dress to look like that one sitting on the shelf.  The woman placed the huge box on the counter and pulled my preserved dress out of the box.  Emotions swelled from my heart and tears welled in my eyes.  Oh no.  That’s my dress in a coffin,  I thought.  It’s stuffed and stiff and untouchable when all I want to do is cuddle up in my bed with it.  Hug it.  See it hanging and free flowing so I can lay in bed and admire it like I did the day after my wedding, day dreaming about that happy spring day.  I want it to have life in it. But instead it’s stuffed with dry white tissue paper and laid to rest behind this clear plastic cover.

For some reason it would feel a lot better if it were just in a plain old dry cleaner bag, hanging in the back of my closet.  I could touch it or see it as I get ready for a date or for a random Tuesday of work and say mmm as I think back fondly about how I felt when I wore the dress: so beautiful, joyful, full of love. So alive. I’m sure it would yellow just the same and after a while I probably wouldn’t even see it anymore. It would become another belonging in my closet that I pay no mind to. But for now, more than anything, I want it back.

The logical part of me thinks I should just keep in the closet at my Dad’s house since we don’t really have room for it here. The emotional part of me imagines myself sitting on the floor of our living room, arms spread wide and cheek resting on the big white cardboard box crying and crying.

The rational part of me knows that I won’t wear it again, that maybe I should sell it and use the money toward another dream: paying down my student debt. The romantic part of me sees this as the symbol of the day I dreamed of for so long.  A dream that has come and gone.