Sometimes I Still Wonder

Sometimes I still wonder what could have been.

Not every day. Not even often anymore. But every now and then I'll watch a video, read an article, or hear someone bring up one of those strange topics we both would have disappeared into for hours, and my mind quietly says, He would've loved this.

For a moment, I miss him. Or at least I think I do. I miss the conversations I imagined we would keep having for the rest of our lives. We were curious about a lot of the same things, and I genuinely admired that. I liked the way his mind worked. I liked that we could wander into history, theology, psychology, politics, or some obscure theory and lose track of time. Those weren't fake memories. They were real. And I don't think pretending they never existed would honor the truth.

Something else surprised me recently, and I almost laughed when I noticed it. I've started feeling beautiful again. Not because someone else told me I was, but because I actually like the woman I'm becoming. I feel lighter. Freer. More at home in my own skin. Every once in a while I catch myself wondering what he would think if he saw me now. Not because I'm hoping he'll come back or regret anything. It's stranger than that. It's almost like a younger version of me still wants to be seen by the person whose opinion mattered so much for so long.

Maybe that's just another thread God is patiently untangling.

The funny thing is that these moments don't make me want to go backwards. They don't make me question everything that happened. They simply remind me that healing isn't the same as amnesia. I can still recognize what I genuinely admired about the man I married without forgetting why our marriage became impossible. Those two things don't cancel each other out. They simply live beside each other now.

I'm still learning what it means to remember someone without wishing to return.

💜