Married by September 2021

October 10, 2020

I opened my eyes. The green flourescent numbers on the microwave read 3:36am. I'd only been asleep for 3 hours. I closed my eyes and the dream I'd been having started to come back to me in pieces: Tears in my eyes, but I was smiling; a beach in the background with white sands and turquoise waves gently crashing on the shore; "Forever...," he says; I can hear his baritone voice filled with love, but I cannot see him. I was dreaming of my wedding day. Somehow, my dream revealed the exact date. I couldn't see it or hear it but when I opened my eyes again, it was settled on my heart that I would be married on September 21, 2021.

January 4, 2021

Yesterday, I celebrated my 38th birthday. It was pretty uneventful. I had been seeing a guy for about 9 months but he was nowhere around to help me celebrate. I can't say that I was particularly heartbroken when he called to cancel our plans for the evening. He hadn't actually made any real plans to begin with and he had been absent for all three of the preceding major holidays. After spending Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve alone, I had every reason to believe that my birthday would be spent no differently.

Until recently, I had believed that Darrell was a great guy. I loved him and perhaps some part of me still does. He and I had been planning to get engaged and have a baby. Somewhere around October last year, everything started to fall apart. For months I gave it my best but it wasn't enough. It seemed the harder I tried, the more distant he became, and the more promises he broke.

I fought so hard for us because he said that he loved me. At one point, he showed it without hesitation. I knew that this man was the one with whom I would spend the rest of my life. We even daydreamed about baby names. We knew exactly what we would name our daughter.

Then, things changed. Suddenly and out of the blue, he just changed. The whole romance spiraled into lonely nights wondering what I had done wrong. I cried quite a lot over these past 4 months as I watched minutes, hours, days, weeks pass with no sign that things between us would ever return to the way it had been.

So, by the time my birthday came around, though I had still held a small bit of hope for us, when he disappointed me, I simply felt numb. He told me he wasn't coming via text. He didn't even give me the respect to call and apologize. I ordered some salad and wings from a local restaurant, drank a glass of cabernet, and watched random movies until I fell asleep. I shed not one tear.

Today, I awoke with the same feeling of numbness and a certainty that Darrell could not possibly be the one I would marry. Problem is, I'm supposed to get married in 9 months from now. That dream I had still stuck with me. My faith says that the dream was real. So I'm choosing to trust it.

Here I am, 38 years old, single, celibate, and heartbroken, with a wedding date in 260 days.