The irony of all of this, is I haven't written anything in a journal in almost two years. That's the longest break I have ever taken from writing. My mind has always been saturated with ramblings, fixated with the way that words are put together to make sounds that not only express but evoke feeling. I have always had my words.

But what I never realized was that I always had my words primarily when I was sad. For most of my life, I never felt I fit anywhere. And that's probably more normal than I think it is, but it's my story nonetheless. And I was sad. I felt like I watched life happen to everyone else while I yearned for just a taste of true real love.

While I had my par amours, while I had my basement apartment flings -- the bad boys that I knew wouldn't call me back -- the ones I wanted to just to hold under a microscope to figure out just what made them tick, I never had love. Or maybe I had some version of it. But it wasn't it. I didnt love myself then, it was impossible for me to love anyone else.

I was thinking about the word love the other day. I think its a word where the definition always changes -- its never the same for any two people. Its a different kind of love, a different kind of feeling.

In any case, I never knew love. But when I met love finally, when I spent time with it -- I had no reservations, no questions. This love was the real deal.

And now, here I am, one thousand days with such a love and now counting twenty-one days without it.

There are always two sides to every story. But I know that I loved and appreciated and respected that man more than anything else I have ever held in my hands. I felt in my soul a security that I have never known. Thinking for so long that love was not meant for me, and then he is there, constant, consistent, true. He asked me to be his wife and I said yes because my husband should also be my best friend. And then swirled in the whirlwind that engagement brings -- the anxiety, the excitement, the love, the fear. But mostly the love.

That day, we went to get our passports for our honeymoon. We were going to Italy. Leaving the courthouse, we picked up the marriage license sheet, high-fived on the way to the car. I can't forget the smile on his face, the love in his eyes, the excitement in his voice. And then, just hours later, he was gone.