Madi’s Reviews > The Wedding People > Status Update

She walks through the marble lobby, and it feels like something huge is ending, but she knows it’s not. She knows this is a story that she will tell again and again for the rest of her life, and that one of these days, she’ll tell it as a beginning.

“But it’s also true that this wedding will never be a waste,” Phoebe says. “Because I came here to die. And now look at me.”

This is when they both start to cry.

No, Phoebe will never be a mother. Phoebe will never know what it’s like to create life inside of her. But there are other ways to create. Other ways to love. Other reasons to live.

Then she remembers she is not supposed to feel shame, according to her therapist and Thyme. She is supposed to be kinder to herself, because this habit of tearing herself down every three seconds in her mind makes her feel ashamed. But at least she notices it. At least she is becoming aware of these things now.

Perhaps there really is no such thing as friendship, just as Phoebe thought on the darkest nights back at home.

But Phoebe can’t let herself fully believe this. It seems truer to say that friendship is just hard. It requires radical honesty. A kind of openness that Phoebe felt for the first time in her life that night she arrived at the hotel, so free and unburdened by anything. So ready to leave this world.

Phoebe wishes she could go back and speak the same way when in bed with her husband. She wishes she could have had the courage to ask for what she wanted, even if it sounded weird. Because she is starting to suspect that she actually likes weird things. That everybody likes weird things, which is why sex shops are open in the middle of a Thursday afternoon.

They got married in a public park, invited only their closest friends and family, because they were suspicious of money, of grand gesture. The bigger the gesture, the emptier the feeling. The more wedding you need, the less happy you must be.

There is no such thing as a happy place. Because when you are happy, everywhere is a happy place. And when you are sad, everywhere is a sad place.