The word seems foreign. Yet here he is: familiar.

Weddings are beauty. I cringed at the thought of walking down the aisle having people stare at me. Not because I’m shy, but the whole thing seemed so silly, staring at me. But I walked, linking arms with both of my parents. In a rose garden filled with 60 of our loved ones, we shared the start of our marriage. I felt beautiful and cared for. I felt short-tempered and hungry. I felt glad we didn’t have a hashtag. I felt in love with everyone around me.

I said “my husband” the first time the next day, returning a pair of satin wide-legged pants to Anthropologie. “My husband didn’t like them, he thought they looked like shiny balloon pants,” I said. It all at once felt possessive and right. My husband. My love. My person.

The reason our volleyball team gave us a unifying moniker.

I immediately followed up my remark that he didn’t control my fashion choices. The woman behind the counter smiled and slipped the pants into the “returns” pile, not realizing the weight of the words I just said.

“My husband.”

Weddings are weird. They’re wonderful, but uncomfortable. In these moments of beauty and celebration, I craved causality and independence. In an effort to make our celebration simple, feelings were hurt. Loved ones were not invited. Voices were not listened to. People felt left out of important traditions. I said “I’m sorry,” more times that day than I thought I would. I desperately didn’t want our celebration to be an inconvenience. But everything felt like an inconvenience for someone else.

We left for our honeymoon the very next day. It felt a bit like we were fleeing our lives. The inconveniences unsettled. The happy moments uncelebrated.

“Days like yesterday are why people have memories,” my husband said. He was right.

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