My high-school graduation dress, which my mother spent weeks planning and sewing, was made of white cotton embroidered all over with tiny green and pink roses, the narrow waist encircled with a matching belt of pink and green grosgrain ribbon. The bodice had thin spaghetti straps, but I was so flat-chested and skinny at 17 that I can’t imagine how I held up a strapless bra. In many ways, it was the dress of a teenager who was still a child, not yet old enough to vote or drink or bear a child herself. A couple of weeks after my graduation, I ran away to be married in that dress in a judge’s office in Tennessee, and my new husband’s photographer uncle later took a studio “wedding” portrait of me wearing it.

I still have the photo, but the dress got thrown away at some point in the many moves we made around the country.

The last time I saw it, it was wadded up and dingy and sad. If I could go back and talk with the girl in that photo, I might tell her that what she thought was being in love was looking for a father, looking for safety, looking for a home. I’d tell her that in this photo she doesn’t yet know the shock of being hit by someone you love, doesn’t yet know that losing a child can cause the fault line in a marriage to crack open, doesn’t yet know that her teenage dreams could end up as bedraggled as her wedding dress. I’d tell her that even after her divorce, she’d still hope to be rescued from herself by love. And I’d warn her that she’d waste a lot of years pursuing a rom-com happy-ever-after instead falling in love with her life. But she wouldn’t believe me, and I really can’t blame her. Aren’t we all at some point on our journey always remembering or searching for that just-out-of-reach, oceanic, unconditional love? It drives us to be teacher’s pet, catch the bouquet, have children, get religion, buy lingerie, be best friends forever, believe in love at first sight, join Match.com, take chances, cheat on our mate or settle down for life with a soul mate. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we get the closest possible thing to that old womb room, and sometimes we keep pushing out the love boat looking for other survivors. The foolish young girl in the photo had no clue about the dangerous shoals and jagged rocks ahead, but some part of me is still rooting for her as she sets out into the world in that childish white dress—hopeful, heart full, full steam ahead. 

Nikki Hardin is a writer of stories, musings, and memories. Her poetry has been published in Riverteeth Journal. She was the founder and publisher of skirt!, a monthly women’s magazine in Charleston, South Carolina. You can reach her at nikki@thedailynikki.com.