None of it helped. The insecurity was not responsive to my management, because it was not actually about me. It was about Ashley and something she had never learned to give herself.
I was genuinely happy when she met Trevor. He was stable and kind and seemed to see her clearly, and for a while the competitive edge between us softened. When she asked me to be her maid of honor, I said yes without hesitation. I hoped the shared project might rebuild some of what we had lost.
What it actually did was give her family proximity to me for six months of wedding planning, which gave them six months to demonstrate, in escalating ways, what they had always actually believed about the balance between my needs and Ashley’s.
The dress incident came about three months before the wedding. At the boutique fitting, I emerged from the dressing room in a simple dusty rose gown with a sweetheart neckline and the owner clasped her hands and said it was beautiful, that the color worked with my complexion and hair. Ashley burst into tears. She said I always had to be the center of attention. My mother, from her chair in the corner, said gently that Melanie would find something less flattering.
Less flattering. Her exact words.
