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The Amato Family
I don’t recognizethe woman staring back at me. I haven’t in a long time now. Her eyes scream in ways a voice could never match. It doesn’t surprise me that no one notices.
They never do.
My reflection is less a mirror image and more a fucked-up two-way mirror with someone else on the other side.
“Giana, you are a vision, my darling.”
My mother’s voice sounds as if it’s a million miles away while my eyes trail down this body that’s never felt like my own. But how could it when I’ve never been allowed to be anything other thanhis?
This is a beautiful dress, I remind myself.
My pulse quickens as the voices around me turn into nothing but droning echoes, and I use everything inside me to calm my racing heart before I’m too far gone.
I scan the intricate lace pattern that fits me like a second skin and roam my hands over the silky part of the fabric—but something is wrong. So, so wrong.
I move my hands slowly, but…it’s too slow. My entire body suddenly shifts, almost as if the world has tilted, and now everything is moving fast. Everything around me, that is. From my mother chirping to the sweet seamstress nodding her head, it’s all suddenly in fast motion while every move I make seems like it has taken an eternity. As if I’m here, but I’m not. I’m an outsider looking in.
Like I’m watching myself trying on this dress, but I’m not really in my body.
My body. This ismybody.
I am my own, I am my own, I am my own.
I repeat the mantra, the broken record on repeat.
I am my own.
The little voice between my ears scolds me, curses my feeble attempt at positivity, and reminds me that I’m not.
I amnotmy own.
And no amount of self-help audiobooks will help me feel moremine.
Nearly ten thousand crystals adorn the bright-white fabric that’s snug on my skin. The plunging neckline shows more than I know my father will be comfortable with.
My mother chose it. She wants the world to see what sheusedto look like. Now that she’s middle-aged and has to visit a stylist monthly to cover her gray hairs and a cosmetic surgeon to pump her face full of filler and get rid of her wrinkles, the only thing she can do is show off her daughter’s body and live vicariously through it.
I inhale a shaky breath as the world around me continues to buzz by, but my thoughts slow, and I do my best to let go of every single dream I once had about marriage.
A love story that would rival all the movies I was forbidden to watch.
Choosing the man I’d spend my forever with.
Falling in love on my own terms…
I have to let go of every single one of those dreams I once pinned on my secret vision board when I was a young girl. Pictures I printed off Google of a happy life, one I thought I could manifest into reality, despite the cards I always knew were laid out in front of me.
Cards that were dealt the moment I was conceived.
I knew this would be my reality despite the dreams I hoped would come true.
And maybe that’s the saddest part of it all.
“I think we could take it in at the waist a bit more, don’t you?”
There’s my mother again. Her voice slightly closer as she comes up to me and gathers some fabric to show the seamstress.
