Yesterday was my birthday. The first day of another year. Another page turned. Another celebration without you, my future husband, wherever you are.
I’ve always loved birthdays. They feel like small ceremonies to celebrate life itself. To me, they are reminders to celebrate beauty, joy, and all the tiny things that make existence meaningful. I’ve always loved the candles, the laughter, and the subtle reminders that life, despite its messiness, can be beautiful.
This last year, though, was different. I couldn’t summon the same enthusiasm. I couldn’t find the beauty I’ve always believed in. This past year, I carried a heaviness I couldn’t quite shake. I felt every ounce of it. Each birthday feels different, but last year’s felt like an extension of the grief of the weight of life. I carried that heaviness all year. I wore it beneath my clothes, behind my laughter, and inside my silences. I tried to mask it, and for a while, I succeeded. I’m good at that, at pretending I’m okay. But this time, I couldn’t. My soul felt tired, and pretending felt like a betrayal of that tiredness.
If my inner self couldn’t feel beauty, then how could I possibly find it in the world around me? In October, standing by the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, something happened to me. The wind was wild, and the water was endless and vast and alive and unconcerned with my heaviness. I remember the way the horizon seemed to stretch into forever. It was in that moment, staring at the ocean, that I remembered what beauty feels like. I remembered that beauty is not in grand gestures, but in the stillness between breaths. A dear friend once called it a taste of heaven. And in that moment, I think that’s what it was. It was a reminder that life, even when heavy, still has a quiet grace and a beauty that is simultaneously easy and hard to describe.
I am healing
Healing has not been easy. And it’s not always linear. It’s slow and messy, and some days it feels like I’m standing still. And I’m learning that the hard way. Some days, I still scratch at old wounds, as if checking to see if they’ve truly healed. I still find myself scratching at the scabs of old pain because I need to be sure the wounds have truly closed. I feel the old wounds tugging at me in the memories I thought I’d buried resurfacing when I least expect them.
But when I look back, I see progress. I see the small victories in the mornings I chose to get out of bed, or the nights I let myself cry without shame, or the moments I laughed again and again and actually meant it. I see a girl who, though bruised, is still standing. Still becoming.
That’s the word I keep coming back to, becoming. This year, I want to live in that space, not in arrival, not in perfection, but in the journey. In the becoming. I want to allow myself to unfold, to grow, and to discover who I am beneath the expectations and fears.
And maybe, somewhere along that journey, I’ll meet you.
I wonder sometimes if you think of me just as much as I think of you. I wonder if somewhere, you’re also walking toward the person you’re meant to be, not knowing that our paths are slowly winding toward each other. I really do think of you often. But I’ve also come to understand that my happiness isn’t waiting for your arrival. I am learning to build it here, in my solitude. I am building this happiness in the morning light that spills through my window, in the laughter of friends, in the quiet satisfaction of surviving yet another day. If you find me, I’ll be grateful. But if you don’t, I’ll still be whole.
Still, if you do find me, I hope you come with gentleness. Love is fragile and strong all at once, and I am still learning how to hold all of it. I hope you’ll be patient with me. I hope you will see past my hesitations, my overthinking, and my tendency to run before I’m chased. I’m not afraid of love itself, but of what losing it can do to me. I hope you’ll understand that my distance is not rejection, but fear that has roots in old hurt and that I’m very slowly learning to let go of.
I’ve had my fair share of rejection. Rejection is a bruise right at the centre of your chest. It throbs in the quiet, especially when you’re reminded of all the times you weren’t chosen. And it has made me even more guarded than I should be. But a person can heal from rejection. Regret… regret, though, is different. Regret is a hurt that lingers forever, rearing its head every so often to remind you that you could have had it all. And so, when you do find me, I hope I find the bravery within me to be more afraid of the what-if than of the potential rejection itself.
I hope you’re healing, too. I hope that by the time we meet, you’ve made peace with your past and found a kind of love within yourself that you’re ready to share. Because love, when it’s right, feels like home, and not the house kind of home, but the belonging kind. The kind that asks for presence and not perfection.
And when love finally finds me, when you find me, I will recognise it by the peace it will bring me and not the fireworks and the butterflies. Because I will know that I am ready. Because I will know that I have become more me.
With everything that I am.
Your Future Wife.