When the wedding day came, I stayed home in Portland. Only an hour before the ceremony did my phone start blowing up with calls and messages, asking where I was. My mom accused me of “ruining the day,” but I told her the truth:

they had excluded me at every step, and I refused to play along. The fallout was harsh, with relatives calling me selfish. Megan comforted me, reminding me that I hadn’t changed — they had. They couldn’t accept the version of me who built a life far from home, so they chose to shut me out instead of adjusting.