Dear Future Husband: Are You Still Coming?

Dear Future Husband,

Sometimes, I start to wonder if you exist at all.

It’s not even really about you, at least not yet. It’s more about the thoughts that are crowding my head at night. About how the world feels like it’s burning at both ends. Climate change, where some experts believe that 2030 is the point of no return, collapsing systems, chaos, Elon Musk, work deadlines, and emotional exhaustion. Sometimes, I wonder if the world will end before you finish your quest to find me? What a big pile of nothing all of this would have been.

In fairy tales, there’s always a journey or a quest. A beast to slay or a curse to break. There’s a forest to get lost in, a riddle to solve, a kingdom to save. The hero is always fighting for something. For love, truth, redemption. So I wonder, are you out there somewhere, sword in hand, facing down your demons? Are you chasing shadows or chasing dreams? Are you slaying dragons, or are the dragons just deadlines, burnout, and the suffocating weight of modern life and adulting? Are you vanquishing climate change, or at least trying to recycle on time, doing your part in a world that feels like it’s constantly unravelling? Are you tangled in quests of your own, promotion, healing, survival, so caught up in surviving that you’ve forgotten there’s someone at the end of your story, waiting?

I often imagine you on some kind of journey, like life is a journey, noble or messy, slow or epic, but it’s hard not to wonder if the book you’re living in even has a chapter for me.

Are you even on your way? Are you travelling by turtle? Because, honestly, it feels like you are. I often think about you like you’re out there in a modern fairy tale. Maybe you’re battling monsters of your own. Like anxiety, insecurity, and indecision. Maybe you got cursed by self-doubt. Maybe you’re stuck in a corporate tower, waiting for a sign.

Maybe you’re stuck in the wrong fairy tale. Where I am in Cinderella and you’re off being the Knight in Shining Armour for Sleeping Beauty. Maybe the narrator of our story skipped a few pages, and I, somehow, got written into the margins instead of the main plot. Maybe your map is outdated. Maybe you are reading the wrong book. Maybe your GPS rerouted you through heartbreak and heartbreak again, and every time you thought you were getting closer, you were just circling the same tower. Or maybe your GPS broke and you took a wrong turn somewhere around chapter five.

I’m not a princess, not really. I am not the girl the guy slays dragons for. I am barely functional in the real world. In a fairy tale, I am a side character, the unimportant one. The NPC. I am the girl scrubbing the floor in the background while the royal ball plays on. I am the girl who polishes the glass slipper, but no one ever checks if it might fit me.

I worry I’m not enough to be anyone’s happily ever after. That I’m just a supporting character in other people’s love stories, a step, a lesson, a turning point on their path. And while I’ve never minded being helpful, I’m starting to ask: is that all I am? Will I be just another stepping stone for you too?

I worry that I am not good enough to find a prince. Not because I lack love to give or stories to tell, but because I’m used to being unseen. I’m the quiet one in the room, the dependable one in the background. The one people lean on without ever looking too closely. I worry that I’m not the one you notice across the room. I’m the extra in the scene, the steady bridge others cross on their way to their dreams. And I don’t mind being helpful. I’ve built parts of my identity around it. I have become the fixer, the listener, the one who always shows up. And I am exhausted of being the strong one. But sometimes I wonder… is that all I am? Just a role to play in someone else’s fairy tale? A prop in their scene? A character without her own plot?

Even in my dreams, the ones where you’re real and you’re everything I’ve hoped for, doubt always finds a way in. Maybe I’m too quiet, or too loud. Too emotional, or not enough. Too thoughtful. Too intense. Too… much. Or not the right kind of much.

And when you do arrive—if you ever do—I worry that you’ll only ever see a friend. It’s happened before. I worry that you’ll miss the layers under the surface. That you’ll take my kindness as neutrality. It’s happened before. I’ve watched people pass me by, not because I wasn’t there, but because they never stopped to look long enough to see me. That’s what scares me the most. That I could be everything you’ve ever needed, and still somehow invisible.

Still, I daydream. I imagine who you might be, how your presence will feel like warmth in a cold world, like safety, like being seen. I imagine how your love will steady me.

I want to believe in you. I want to believe in us. But every day, that belief grows a little more fragile.

I’m not sure when you’ll get here, or even if you will.

But I’m holding out hope.

I’m just… slowly losing it.

Yours (maybe),
Me