Thanks to Facebook Memories, I realized today that it was 18 years ago that I met my first fiancée. It seems like such a routine exchange. "Thank you for taking me home yesterday." I wish I had never followed up. I was trying to embrace uncertainty and be hopeful for opportunity, trying to ignore some of my instincts which had led me in the wrong direction.
My relationship with [redacted] had ended 5 months prior. I was just coming to terms with the fact that it ended for a reason. Any long-term dreams with her were only ever based on potnential. We both recognized that we had something special and rare, but there would never be any momentum. There was a wall that neither of us could break through. But for a time, there was so much hope, and I genuinely loved her.
She was beautifully empathetic, sweet, shy, confused, and battling demons that neither of us fully understood at the time. I was inexperienced and shallow in my understanding of relationships. It's a relationship that I would repeat, if I did my life over again, fully understanding its lifespan. It was wonderful for a time. It ended as it should have.