It wasn't enough to be happy.

They had to be seen being happy.

Not enough to be loved.

They had to look like the sort of people who were loved.

Not enough to build a life.

The life had to look impressive from the outside.

Once,

there were no photographs of them.

only the occasional hand,

a shoulder,

a silhouette carefully cropped at the edge of a frame.

Love, apparently, needed no audience.

Then came the ring.

And suddenly

there were roses.

And champagne.

And hands intertwined

against sunsets,

hands intertwined

against marble,

hands intertwined

against walls they had apparently

been saving for this very occasion.

There were close-ups of the ring

and close-ups of the close-ups

and photographs of photographs

of the moment the ring

was first photographed.

There were captions about forever

followed by another caption about forever just in case forever had somehow been missed.

At first,

we smiled.

How lovely, we thought.

They are in love.

Then came another announcement.

And another.

And another.

Someone looked at me one day and asked, genuinely,

“Wait, didn't they already get married?”

No.

Not yet.

This was only the engagement.

The wedding, apparently,

would require its own historical archive.

And somewhere beneath

the carefully arranged flowers,

the coordinated outfits,

the cinematic angles,

the endless declarations

of an eternity we had never asked to witness,

I began to wonder,

when happiness becomes this heavily documented,

does it still feel like happiness?

Or does it become a performance of happiness?

And maybe there is nothing wrong with wanting beautiful things.

Nothing wrong with wanting to be admired.

Nothing wrong with celebrating loudly when something wonderful happens.

But there comes a point where celebration becomes theater,

where joy becomes branding,

where the photograph matters more than the moment it was meant to capture.

A beautiful thing held up to the light

again and again

until the beauty wears thin.

Because joy can be loud.

Love can be excessive.

People can be hopelessly,

ridiculously,

wonderfully excited.

But there is a difference between celebrating a moment

and making the moment

beg for applause.

Perhaps that is the strangest kind of overkill:

not having too much love,

but needing everyone to know that you have it.

Not enough to be happy.

You must be see being happy.

Not enough to be loved.

You must look like the sort of person who is loved.

Not enough to build a life.

The life must look impressive from the outside.

And somewhere along the way,

the proof becomes more important

than the thing you are trying to prove.