All That Glitters

Top Five Stresses in My Life Right Now:

1. I drafted a mazel tov text and am terrified my fingers will slip in my sleep and the text will accidentally blast out to my zillion contacts before it’s actually official.
2. What if I forget his name? And people will be shrieking, “Mazel tov, to who?” and I’ll be like, “Um, right, let me get back to you, can you repeat the question, please?”
3. What if he changes his mind tonight? What if I change my mind tonight?
4. What if someone breaks into my house and steals my dress? Because even after three months of dating him, I still have nothing else to wear.
5. My parents are going to insist on a mezhinka. I AM NOT PLAYING WITH BROOMSTICKS AT MY WEDDING TO REMIND THE WORLD THAT I WAS THE LAST TO GET MARRIED.

Okay, I’m deleting the text. I don’t know how to phrase it anyway. Hi everyone, I’m engaged, smiley-face emoji! Which seems anticlimactic, smiley-face emojis, like that’s all you get after a decade-plus in the shidduch trenches, especially since I suspected an engagement bracelet wasn’t in the works. Or — more like it — Guys, I don’t know how this happened but I think I’m engaged and I’m freaking out and I can’t even remember his name half the time because I’m too scared to say it out loud so don’t stress me out and ask me on the spot what his name is because things are going to get VERY awkward.

I hesitated, removed the “VERY” part, then reread the text, hyperventilated for five minutes, and deleted the entire thing.

I buried my head back in my pillow. Okay, I took care of problem number one. But my single friends — now what? They’re going to come to my vort dressed in black, holding signs, protesting my engagement to—