A woman felt physically cold and detached on her wedding day despite warm weather and celebratory surroundings. Her mother noticed her icy hands, yet she walked down the aisle because the ceremony and expectations overwhelmed an internal warning. The physical sensation served as her body's alarm, signaling that something fundamental felt wrong. She concealed her unease behind lace, lipstick, and practiced smiles while she complied with external hopes and plans. Over time she experienced a gradual loss of herself—piece by piece, smile by smile—resulting in a life that looked perfect externally but felt hollow and ghostlike inside.
At first, I laughed it off-after all, it was February in Connecticut. Cold hands made sense, right? But that day, something didn't add up. We were in the middle of an unusual Indian summer. The air was warm, the sun soft and golden. People were sipping champagne outside without jackets. And yet, I was frozen. Not just my hands- me.
What I didn't know at the time was that this wasn't about nerves. It wasn't about cold weather or wedding day jitters. It was my body sounding the alarm. A deep, internal signal that something wasn't right. Beneath the lace and lipstick, behind the practiced smile and the applause of the crowd, there was a whisper. "Don't do this." But how could I possibly listen to that voice?
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