All Grown Up

My brother got married last night. The ceremony was beautiful, his new wife was beautiful, I ate too much, drank a lot of free wine, and danced the night away. I woke up this morning without a hangover but with an inexplicable feeling of emptiness in my stomach. I know that at events like weddings I am painfully cognizant of how little is left of my family. My mother and I were the only people at the wedding who bear any realtion to my brother. But I don't think it is grief at the loss of any of my relatives that left me feeling like I had a hole in my stomach this morning. I also know that I am harboring some bitterness about my exclusion from participating in the wedding as anything more than a guest, but I don't think that's the reason for my emptiness either. My brother has been with Lauren for over five years, and they've been engaged for 4 of those years. I have had plenty of time to prepare for their marriage. But today I feel like something is different. I talked to John about it, and he told me that he felt the same kind of feeling after his younger sister got married. There is something about marriage that makes everything permanently different. My brother is no longer really my "baby brother," he's now an adult with a wife. We are more separate than we were before. I am definitely happy for him and for Lauren, but I feel like a door has shut. Growing up, my brother and I were very close. We did not battle any type of sibling rivalry and we certainly did not fight the way brothers and sisters often do. As we became adults, we grew apart instead of closer together. I realize now that our relationship will never be what it was again. We have new families now and what we had cannot be restored. It is that change that I am internally mourning right now. I asked John why I didn't feel this ball in my stomach when the two of us got married. He said that it's different when it's us. It's not so different in terms of the change that marriage brings, but it is certainly different in terms of my feelings and my perception. I've been married for almost 7 months, but it took my brother's wedding for it to hit me that I'm not a little girl anymore.