The Ballad of The Burning Veil
The Ballad of the Burning Veil
I posted a photo recently that got a little bit of backlash. While it’s true that I like to believe myself to be an unapologetic, carefree person, the reality is actually the opposite. I care too much about what other people think of me. The constant seeking of approval from others has been stifling to my own development as a woman. This photo was the start of my quest to end that.
My wedding date was scheduled for December 5, 2020. My decision to cancel the wedding came sometime in August of that year. I used the pandemic as an excuse (it was to be a destination wedding.) Only three people knew the truth behind the decision. My daughter, my best friend and my mother. Eight months later, I still find it difficult to speak about the reasons behind it. I’ve written about it a million times in an attempt to try and process what happened, how we fell apart. It’s still too fresh to publish. I still sleep on my side of the bed. I’m not ready yet. But here’s part of it.
The day of the canceled wedding approached quickly. The thing about time is that it just keeps moving forward, whether you want it to or not. I tried to ignore the date each time I looked at my calendar but it just stared at me, mockingly. I considered sleeping and crying the entire day: writing bad poetry and listening to depressing love songs from the 70’s. But then I remembered something my creative writing professor once told us about story plots. She said, “the crisis point of a story must always be manifested in action…crisis is always a scene.” I began to think of myself not as me, but as a character in the story of my life. And I didn’t want to have a character who laid in bed all day crying. That would be boring to write. So I literally changed the narrative.
I booked myself a cabin in the Pocono mountains. It was isolated. The only sounds came from the aging floorboards crying under the weight of my steps. Creaking. Logs burning in an old stone fireplace. I drank a lot of wine. I wrote a lot. I hiked. I called my ex and told him I was surprised he didn’t reach out, considering what day it was. There was a hesitation on the line and it dawned on me that he had no idea what I was talking about. He was having a regular Saturday. I think it was there, in the parking lot of a quaint little Dutch restaurant where I’d just devoured red cabbage and schnitzel that brought me back to my childhood, it hit me. I was the only one carrying this weight. I was the only one with the stones of the dead relationship still tied around my ankles, dragging me further and further underwater. I had to cut the rope or I would drown.
The actual burning of the veil turned out to be a very hilarious story I retell as a comedic bit. The motivation behind it was more solemn. I was working on a photography project for class and I’d decided to take very intimate, beautiful photos of all of the women in my life. As a celebration of sisterhood or what have you. I thought that, as a symbol, my burning a wedding veil would be a great photo to use on the last page of my presentation. Things to note:
It was not my own veil. I was going to get married wearing my mothers veil which she heartbreakingly has been preserving for me in a plastic bag stored in the attic. She brought it down for me to try on when I got engaged. It was so beautiful I cried. It still had the edelweiss flowers that my great-grandmother had sewn into it for her wedding. We were both excited. We were both angry when we had to put it back in the attic.
The veil was purchased at a GoodWill store and had no sentimental value (I’m sure the bride who donated it was quite done with her marriage as well, so I like to think she’d agree with my choice to burn it). It was always meant to be symbolic of the disillusionment of marriage. It was a literal burning of societal expectation that women need to find happiness through marriage. It was a woman emerging from the flames, forever changed. A shedding of sorts.
It was a not a specific fuck you to my ex. It was not even about just me. It was a comment on things much larger.
For this burning I called in help from one of my favorite people on Earth. He is a photographer and we went to the woods, almost burned it down (lighter fluid is no joke yall) laughed, drove around, listened to amazing music and went home. I posted the photo.
I saw my ex a few weeks after the photo was posted. He felt the need to let me know that neither her nor his family appreciated the photo. I immediately felt bad. I never imagined it would have been taken as disrespectful. I apologized for the misconception the image produced, but I couldn’t apologize for my motivation behind it.
When something abruptly changes the course of your life, like an engagement or a birth, you celebrate. You imagine all of the future celebrations. The children that will follow, the homes you will buy, the life you will live together. But when something that changes your course of life in a so-called negative way, like a divorce, there are no celebrations. There are no remembrances. This is no imaging the future life you will now have. The advice people give you is to “get over it.” How do you get over something that everyone desperately tries to sweep under the rug. Tries to hide away from you, in order to “protect you”. No one mentions it, so as to not “embarrass” you. Everyone forgets, to “help” you move on.
Each family member had our “Save the Date” magnet proudly displayed on their fridges. Each week, as I would absentmindedly go to the fridge to grab a snack, I would notice the glaringly obvious void where the magnet had been removed. In kitchens across New Jersey, everyone was erasing that day. I simply wanted to replace that image with something else. An image of me, in the woods, lighting a fire, saying: I’m always going to rise no matter how heavy the weight.
I don’t want to forget anything. Not the engagement nor the breakup. It is all a part of my story. I want to own it, embrace it. And then I want to move forward and try it all again. I still believe in love. I still believe I will wear my mothers veil one day. Just not on December 5th.