I walk quietly beneath a canopy of trees, their leaves rustling in the breeze against the thunderous sound of the waterfalls roaring ahead. What I’m doing is admittedly cliché: a woman lost in the jungle of her mind on the wild borders of Argentina and Brazil. I’m hiking along the trails of Iguazú National Park, where a god known as M’Boi is purported to have slashed the earth in a jealous rage after falling in love with an Indigenous woman named Naipi. It’s said that Naipi’s beauty was so arresting that it could halt the flowing waters of the Iguaçu River. Although she was in love with a mortal man named Tarobá, the deity desired the woman for himself. As the story goes, the god punished the lover’s attempts to flee by violently slashing the river and creating the waterfalls we know today.
I am devastated by Iguazú’s beauty, frustrated even. It feels silly to stand here taking selfies – my arm outstretched at an odd angle and messy hair held back by a thrifted DKNY scarf – as though I should be paying homage to this view through sonnets and interpretive dance instead.
Around me, families and couples are beginning to trickle down the elevated wooden walkways, picking up pace as the trees reveal Devil’s Throat in all its glory. As tempting as it is to stay here by the falls, letting the swelling crowds and roaring water drown out my thoughts, I know I need to be alone. I’ve come to Iguazú National Park to finally stop avoiding myself. I turn away from the waterfalls and hike down one of the circular trails winding through the jungle. The farther I walk, the more I am enveloped by wilderness, the roar of the cascades and the crowds of spectators slowly falling away, and suddenly, I am alone. So alone that if I stop moving, the unnerving silence is punctuated only by my breathing and the occasional call of the capuchin monkeys above me. I feel a surge of anxiety as I ask myself aloud:
“What is it you have to say?”
Admittedly, I’ve felt my inner voice tugging at my sleeve for months, trying to grab my attention and get me to stand still long enough to hear it. I am now far enough from other people that I feel comfortable talking to myself. I let the question linger for a second before an exasperated response roars out of me.
“I DON’T WANT TO GET MARRIED!”
I practically scream the words with such force that I spot a few plush-crested jays with their tuxedo-like markings flutter to the sky.
“I DON’T WANT TO GET MARRIED!”
I feel as though I’ve just kicked myself to the ocean’s surface, inhaling for the first time, letting my body fill with oxygen as my mind starts to steady. Here is the final frontier, the words that have been floating in cloudy fragments these past few months, finally coalescing.
I don’t want to get married because I’m not ready.
I don’t want to get married because I’m not in love.
I don’t want to get married because I’m not happy.
I don’t want to get married.
For the first time, I truly understand why my fiancé and I cannot move forward. For too long, we’ve ignored that he’s grown roots and I’ve grown wings, that our futures had long ago diverged. I love him the way one might love a childhood friend. It’s this love that has kept me in place, afraid of the chasm that will be left in his absence, and it’s this very fear that has pushed me into the arms of others, desperate for someone to catch me when I inevitably fall. But the painful truth is I’m no longer in love with my fiancé, and if he were to confront himself, I know he’d realise he is no longer in love with me.
“I finally know that my life is worth fighting for and that the woman I can become is waiting for me – if only I’m strong enough to change course and reach for her.”
Despite it all, I knew he would stand there on our wedding day and say “I do” for all the times we had truly meant it when we said we wanted forever. He’d look past these tumultuous months and promise himself to a woman who had been running since the day he proposed. He would file away the fights and hope I’d somehow grow into the woman he wanted rather than marry me for the woman I’d become. We both deserve to be with people who know – beyond a shadow of a doubt –that this is the relationship they want. Only now, in the Iguazú jungle, do I feel certain that the kindest thing I can do is give us back our futures, freeing up space in our lives for a love we both have yet to find.
I feel everything now: relieved, terrified, sad, exhilarated, inspired, defiant. But above all, I feel strong – a power that seems to infuse every part of my body. I had become complacent and avoidant. I went through the motions of planning a wedding I didn’t want. I drowned my doubts in alcohol and distraction, letting go of the steering wheel of my life long ago. Now, I had only myself to blame for the direction my world had drifted.
My stomach is now twisting in knots. I’ll have to fly home and call off my engagement and cancel a wedding that is now just days away. I can no longer avoid the turbulent river in front of me or keep looking for ways to get around it. Instead, I’ll walk right in and face the current, pulling from a well of strength that has now been dug. I’ll face it all – the vitriol and the disappointment, the confusion and the pain, the sadness, and the loss – because I finally know that my life is worth fighting for and that the woman I can become is waiting for me if only I’m strong enough to change course and reach for her.
And finally, after months of avoiding the arms of my fiancé by stumbling into the embrace of others. After months of hiding behind lace veils and sprinting down jet bridges. I know I am strong enough to just say no to getting married and walk away.
Extracted from Call You When I Land (Hanover Square Press, 2023).
We spent all this money on weighted blankets for a reason. And we’re about to get our money’s worth.
