Your Stories

Dubuque, IA, USA on the 23rd of September, 2016, at 10:00pm

By Lena H

My husband and I first met in the 7th grade when I was introduced to our class after moving to Iowa. A few weeks after, he told me I looked like Winnie Cooper from the Wonder Years and asked me to be his girlfriend. He bought me a coke at a local restaurant and told me that I was the first girl he ever loved. I was his first kiss. We were on and off through our teenage years. I have a memory of us at 15 and 16 in my parent’s driveway when he told me to break up with my boyfriend because he loved me...but I stayed with my boyfriend.
 
The memory that haunted me for years was the last time we saw each other face to face prior to us getting back together years later. He had just returned home from his service in the Marine Corps. I was 18 and he was 19.  We started seeing each other after I ended a long term relationship. It was only a few weeks that we were together and then I suddenly stopped calling him.  I didn’t answer his calls and I went back to the relationship I had broken off.
 
He had showed up at my job after several days and handed me a note.  The note said that he had a conversation with his Dad and his Dad helped him realize that he needed to fight for what should be his and that he and I should be together.  I remember staring down at that note, I folded it back up, and clenched it in my hand.  I was afraid to look at him and respond. It took me a minute, but I nervously laughed and asked if he had heard the news. I could tell he was confused...and then I told him I was 8 weeks pregnant.  We both knew the baby wasn’t his.
 
The next moment is something that had played over and over in my mind.  It was like a movie playing in slow motion. He slowly backed away from me and I could hear him whisper over and over, “It should have been mine. It should have been mine”. That was the last time I saw him for the next 18 years.
 
What he didn’t know, is that I held onto that note. Every now and then, I would take it out, read it, and then tuck it back into my jewelry box.  I did this until several years ago when I lost the note during a move.
 
Within that 18 year time frame, he reached out to me a few times at various stages of my life and after I had given birth to my two children.
The first time, I remember answering the phone and hearing his voice.  He apologized to me for the way we left things the very last time we saw each other. I barely said a word to him during that call. The memory of our last moment together was still too painful.
 
The second time he reached out to me was during the end of his marriage hoping that I was available to start over too, but I remember telling him, that I was happy and had just begun a new relationship.
 
Several years later and the third time he contacted me, he found my work email through the internet.  I remember sitting at my desk at work, on an ordinary day, and saw an email notice pop up with his name.  I remember just staring at the bottom right hand corner of my screen watching the notice appear and then disappear.  I had tears in my eyes. I was afraid to open it and it took me a few minutes.  His email said that he was looking for an old friend and that he had hoped was me. When I responded and I told him it was me, he asked what I had been up to and that he missed me.  I wrote back and told him that I had gotten married a few years before. I remember telling him that I was sorry and that he was too late. My heart dropped each and every time he contacted me.  

Eight years later, when my marriage was ending, it took me a few weeks to gather the courage, but I knew that it was my turn.  I needed to find out if he still loved me because I never stopped loving him.  My hope was that I wasn’t too late…and I wasn’t.
 
Since the time I was 18 years old, I knew that he was the one I was supposed to be with but life happened and we must not have been ready for each other then. It’s like we needed all of those life experiences to shape us and get us to the day we finally came back together. We needed to understand the true meaning of love, and to not take each other for granted.

On the night of September 23, 2016, the stars finally aligned and we met face to face for the first time since we were 18 and 19 yrs old. On November 25, 2017, we got married at the ages of 37 and 38.