Dear Future Husband,

I am flying over the Western United States and the Rocky Mountains lay below me like broken chocolate beneath clouds of pink cotton candy. It’s breathtaking. And I am alone. I snap a picture and store this moment in my heart, like I have so many things. So many people. So many stories. So many memories.

I arrive to a houseful of people. Everyone is laughing. Enjoying the moment. I am laughing too. It is a beautiful California evening. The sort of clear, starless night that makes people fall in love… two wandering souls, united under the spell of the vast, open sky…

And I am here. Surrounded by people. Learning their names, hometowns and the thousand trivia facts that make each of them wonderfully unique. Stories. Beautiful stories all around me. This fascinates the reporter in me and I want to hear all of them. I ask too many questions….they suddenly need to refill their drinks. I search for the reporter’s “off” button.

We play an icebreaker game. I smile and listen politely, and try to memorize everyone’s favorite colors and what kind of animal they would be. Then it’s time to offer my own little trivia. I wonder what my persona should be here. Should I play the sweet little church girl? Or the confident, intelligent writer? I pick the latter and people seem impressed. Someone does a goofy dance that makes everyone laugh. I laugh too. Not because it’s funny. Because I am happy.

But I am alone. I wish I could share all this with you. I wish I could be here with you, working in this room, this group, and together making the stories we will tell when we are old. I wish I could tell you random stupid comments during a dull moment, or catch your eye when something’s funny…but only funny to us. Us…

I wish I could hear your voice in the next room…lighting up my heart, your very presence somehow making me want to be a better person. I wish you were here. To make me feel, that even if the world falls apart around me, you are here. With me. Always.

But you are not here. And I instinctively search each bearded face, wondering if you are there. But, one by one each walks to the altar, starry-eyed for another. And I trudge on. This is fine. I have a thousand things to do, and being broken hearted isn’t one of them.

But I sure wish I could find you. Because I would love to share all this with you. I feel like you should be here by now, and I certainly never thought it would take this long. And, as the birthdays roll by, one and another, I have this terrifying nagging sensation. What used to be that “lifetime” we had to spend together, is slowly dwindling to a handful of good decades. I try not to think that way. It makes me cry.

But, maybe it was all for the best. Maybe, as they say, timing is everything… So, for now, I am storing all of this away for you….snapping those moments of the soul while moving, living, loving, being, laughing, and becoming…becoming everything I was created to be…….Until We Meet