Once the date passed, I was really able to move on and direct my attention forward. I still think about my former fiancé sometimes. But I’m now engaged to the groomsman who walked me down the aisle that day. Life is so strange sometimes.

-Kate

This June will mark one year since what would have been my wedding day. I’ve ridden a roller coaster of pain and relief to get to the stability and happiness I now possess, but as June creeps closer, I find myself thinking about life one year ago.

My fiancé and I called it quits two weeks before the big day, and I was all too aware of where I would have been and what I’d have been doing if we had gone through with it. Now I’d be at my final fitting, I thought one afternoon, looking up from a book I was reading. Now we’d be at the rehearsal dinner, I thought at the dinner table with my family.

We were to marry on a Sunday, and I rose early that morning and set off for the beach with an old friend and his girlfriend. Over the years, I often went out to the Hamptons in Long Island, New York with L. one or two weekends a summer. He had a long-standing theory that the weekend I chose to join him would bring the most beautiful weather. Somehow, it always worked out that way and we’d spend the day basking in the sun and jumping the waves, and the evening strolling the main street, licking ice cream cones.

This year was different. The sky was an uncertain gray when we hopped off the train, and by the time we had sunk beach chairs into the sand and splayed ourselves across them, the skies opened up. It wasn’t a downpour, exactly; more like a cold, angry spitting. The waves churned up, and I sat glued in my seat, starting out at the sea. Finally, I turned to L.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is the weather I brought because this is how I feel.”

Words couldn’t describe then what a cold and wet day could. How could I love someone and yet know that spending the day shivering at the beach with others was better than standing under the marriage canopy with him? All I could think all day was: I almost got hit by a train today. I almost got hit by a train.

How will you spend what would have been your wedding day? I recommend removing yourself from your usual life, and spending it with friends. It sure as hell wasn’t a fun day for my friends, but I’m incredibly indebted to them for sharing and lessening my pain.

This year, I have one wish: To get on a plane. Though the days didn’t jibe exactly, I’ll be in Vietnam on the last day I ever spoke with my ex-fiancé: the day I walked out of our home. If I’m not still plagued by jetlag back in the States on the actual W day, I’m going to the beach. This year, it’s going to be sunny and beautiful.