Sometimes, lying awake at three in the morning, I think about those fourteen years. About all the time we lost.
All the moments we missed. All the roads we walked separately that we could have traveled together.
The birthdays and holidays and ordinary evenings. The successes we couldn’t share with each other in real time.
The disappointments we faced alone instead of together. The inside jokes we never got to develop.
The shared history we never built.
But then Bella reminds me, usually when I get too caught up in regret, that we needed those years apart.
“We weren’t ready then,” she told me just last week. Curled up against me on our couch.
“We were kids. We would have broken each other trying to hold on when we both needed space to grow.”
“You needed to become a doctor without resenting me for being the reason you didn’t. I needed to build my own life and career without defining myself entirely through my relationship with you.”
Maybe she’s right. Maybe everything happened exactly the way it needed to.
Maybe those fourteen years of separation were necessary. For us to become people capable of building something lasting.
But I still wish I’d read that note sooner.
I still wish I’d been braver at eighteen instead of at thirty-two.
I still think about all the years we could have had together. And even though I’m grateful for where we are now, I’ll always carry a small ache for the time we lost.
But we’re together now. Finally.
And we’re building something real. Something that was worth the wait, even if the wait was longer than it needed to be.
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