For a long time, I thought the wedding would stay with me because of what Max had said.
I remembered his laughter.
I remembered the way the guests had turned toward us.
I remembered how quickly I'd felt small again after spending days trying to prepare myself for that moment.
But those weren't the memories that lasted the longest.
It was my daughter's question about her dress.
It was the way she had looked down at herself, then turned to see how the skirt moved.
It was the way she'd accepted my answer and climbed into the car.
She hadn't needed me to tell her that every person in the world would find her beautiful.
She needed to know that she could like something about herself without asking everyone else for permission.
I wanted her to keep that feeling for as long as she could.
I wanted her little sister to have it, too.
And I wanted to learn how to live that way myself.
I didn't suddenly stop caring about my appearance.
I still liked clothes that fit well.
I still noticed when my hair looked good.
I still enjoyed being told I looked nice.
There was nothing wrong with any of that.
The difference was that I no longer wanted those things to serve as evidence that I deserved respect.
I could enjoy a compliment without needing it to cancel out an insult.
I could dislike a photograph without treating it as a verdict on my body.
I could change my mind about what I wanted to wear without imagining Max watching me do it.
Those were small freedoms.
They added up.
The cardboard box from Edward's car remained part of the memory.
I could still picture it on the table at the reception.
I could still see Max lifting the trousers and staring at them, his smile fading as he realized the gift wasn't what he'd expected.
For a moment, he had been forced to listen to a story that didn't fit the version of events he preferred.
Edward had once believed his appearance made him less worthy.
He had learned to question that belief.
I had helped him notice it, though I hadn't known I was doing so.
Then, years later, I'd asked him to stand beside me so I could use his appearance to prove my worth to someone else.
I had wanted the handsome coworker.
I had wanted the reaction.
I had wanted the evidence.
Edward's story had shown me how much I'd misunderstood the lesson I had helped him learn.
The trousers weren't proof that Edward had become valuable by changing his body.
They were proof that he had stopped treating his body as a reason to postpone his life.
He could wear a different size now.
That didn't mean the person he'd been before deserved less respect.
I had needed to hear that.
Not because Edward's experience could solve mine, but because it showed me how easily people could mistake a change in appearance for a change in worth.
Max had done that to me.
I'd started doing it to myself.
I couldn't change the way he saw me.
I could change whether I continued seeing myself through his eyes.
That was a slower process than I'd hoped.
Some days, I still caught myself wondering what he would think if he saw me now.
When that happened, I tried to remember the question I'd asked him at the wedding.
Why did he still need me to be undesirable?
He hadn't answered.
I didn't know whether he'd ever thought seriously about it afterward.
I didn't know what Claire had said to him once they were alone.
I didn't know whether the conversation had changed anything between them.
Those were parts of their lives I couldn't see.
I no longer needed to invent answers.
Max had made his choices.
He had married Claire.
He had hurt me.
He had also shown me, repeatedly, that he was willing to use my insecurities when he wanted to feel superior.
I didn't have to wait for him to understand that before I could move forward.
I didn't need an apology to recognize what had happened.
And I didn't need his regret to make my future worthwhile.
As for Edward, I was grateful he had come to the wedding.
I was also glad I'd told him the truth about how his decision had affected me.
His intentions had been understandable.
His choice to keep them from me had still been wrong.
I could hold both truths without turning our friendship into something it wasn't.
He remained my friend from work.
We continued talking.
We continued helping each other when we could.
And I learned that even a good friendship needed honesty more than it needed someone to guess what the other person should learn.
I hadn't asked Edward to teach me how to value myself.
I had asked him to pretend to be my boyfriend.
That was an important distinction.
I could admit that I'd been wrong about what I wanted without deciding that everything about me was wrong.
That was something I'd never managed to do while I was married to Max.
Back then, any criticism seemed to become a judgment of my whole self.
If he disliked my appearance, I felt unattractive.
If he criticized my choices, I questioned my judgment.
If he pulled away, I wondered what I'd failed to provide.
I had treated each problem as evidence that I wasn't enough.
Now I was trying to separate the things that happened from the conclusions I drew about myself.
My marriage had ended.
That didn't mean I was unlovable.
My husband had cheated.
That didn't mean I had caused his decision.
My ex-husband had laughed at the man I brought to his wedding.
That didn't mean nobody would want me.
It meant Max had laughed.
His cruelty belonged to him.
I didn't have to carry it as proof of anything else.
One evening, some time after the wedding, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror while getting ready for bed.
The light was ordinary.
My hair was loose.
I was tired from work and from taking care of the girls.
I caught myself turning sideways.
The movement was so familiar that I almost continued without noticing.
Then I stopped.
For years, I had used mirrors to search for the things Max might criticize.
I had looked at my waist.
I had checked my arms.
I had wondered whether I looked acceptable from a different angle.
This time, I let my hands fall to my sides.
I looked at my face.
I looked at the person standing there.
I didn't try to decide whether she was attractive enough to deserve someone's attention.
I didn't imagine Edward standing beside her.
I didn't imagine Max laughing.
I simply looked.
I could see the years I'd lived.
I could see the tiredness that came with raising two children and rebuilding a life after a marriage ended.
I could see a woman who had been hurt and who had spent too long blaming herself for another person's choices.
I could see someone who had made mistakes, too.
I'd tried to use Edward to provoke Max.
I'd allowed my desire for approval to become more important than my own comfort.
I'd let fear determine what I wore and how I entered a room.
I wasn't proud of those things.
But I didn't need to turn them into another reason to dislike myself.
I could learn from them.
I could do better.
And I could keep going without waiting until I looked different.
From the other room, I heard the girls talking.
My youngest was supposed to be asleep.
My older daughter was reminding her of that.
Then I heard a little thump, followed by a burst of giggling.
I shook my head.
"Girls?"
The room went quiet.
For about two seconds.
Then my youngest called out that she needed me.
I left the mirror and went to see what was happening.
There was no grand revelation waiting for me.
No final conversation with Max.
No moment when he came back and admitted that he'd been wrong about everything.
There was only my life, continuing.
The girls needed me.
Work would begin again in the morning.
There would be days when I felt confident and days when I questioned myself.
I would probably hear Max's voice in my head again.
But I no longer believed I had to obey it.
The wedding had begun with me trying to make my ex-husband jealous.
I had wanted him to see me with Edward and decide that he'd lost something valuable.
Instead, I learned that I could spend the rest of my life waiting for Max to recognize my worth and still never feel secure.
Because the person I had been waiting for to approve of me was the same person who had taught me to doubt myself.
I couldn't build a peaceful life around that contradiction.
So I stopped waiting.
I stopped asking whether Max would regret leaving.
I stopped treating Edward's attention as the answer to a question about my value.
I stopped expecting one perfect outfit or one man's reaction to settle something that had been hurting me for years.
I didn't become a different woman overnight.
I was still Veronica.
I was still a mother of two girls.
I was still someone who had loved a man who eventually treated her cruelly.
But I was also someone who could recognize what had happened without accepting his judgment as the truth about her.
That was enough to begin.
Sometimes, when I catch my reflection now, I still remember Max asking when I'd last really looked at myself.
I understand the question differently.
I had been looking at myself all along.
I'd just been searching for the things he wanted me to see.
Now, when I look, I try to leave his voice out of it.
Not Edward's voice, either.
Not anyone else's.
Just mine.
And when my youngest calls from another room, impatient for me to stop standing around and get on with the evening, I don't need to finish inspecting my reflection.
I can smile, turn away, and go.
Because my life is not waiting for someone to decide whether I deserve to be in it.
The End
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My Ex Invited Me to Watch Him Marry the Woman He Chose Over Me, and I Made One Decision I Would Soon Regret
Part 8 of 8
