Love Hurts

I'm not going to go into too much detail about how my wife and I met. It's way too involved. It involves the internet, her job, two different states, the airline industry and Stevie Ray Vaughn .... just for starters!!! Ha! Not to mention the most amazing love letter in the world ... anyway .....

We dated for a year and 4 months, commuting between NC and Iowa. She lived in Cedar Rapids at the time. We never went more than 2 weeks without seeing each other .... trying to get together more often than that when possible. In the time between weekends, which always seemed like an eternity, we sent love letters back and forth via email and spent countless hours on the telephone.

The partings were always the hardest. Gosh they were agonizing. Especially the first two. I'll never forget the first one. Sunday, December 14th 1999. An amazing 2 and a half days in Cedar Rapids with the woman I had come to love during a year of calls and emails. We got out of her car at the airport. It was gently snowing. Our breath foggy in the cold, Iowa air. It was less than 2 weeks before Christmas and I had a present for her hidden in my bag. As we started to head into the terminal, I handed it to her making her promise not to open it until Christmas. She started balling and kissed me and told me she loved me a dozen times and held onto me so tight she almost squeezed the life out of me. We walked into the terminal.

I remember us sitting quietly in the tiny boarding lounge, waiting for the equally tiny commuter plane to arrive. We sat against each other holding hands. Not saying much. Neither one of us knowing what to say. Her eyes were swollen and red .. mine were brimming and I was afraid to look at her or I'd start crying right there in the airport. Finally, the plane appeared and it was time to board. For the rest of my life I will remember how hard she held me, crying her eyes out. "I will see you again soon, right?" She barely squeaked out. "New Years" ... "I'll get you the ticket" .. I barely squeaked back. We kissed and I literally felt my stomach turn inside out. I wanted to take her with me so freakin bad. I walked out to the plane in the snow and tried not to cry. I was a mess the whole way to Kansas City and the whole way back to Greensboro, NC.

2 weeks later, she flew into GSO and I picked her up at the airport. She was supposed to stay 4 days. She ended up staying 11. I knew right then and there ... that week .... that I had found the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. When it came time for her to fly back to Iowa, I was the one shaking in the terminal. And just like it had been snowing in Iowa, it was raining in North Carolina. We sat in the boarding lounge holding hands and not talking again. When they called her flight, the waterworks started. From both of us. I stood there and watched her plane taxi out and felt like dying. I was a wreck until I heard from here safe and sound in her car heading back into town in Cedar Rapids.

From there, it was a cycle of 3 and 4 day weekends (thank you multiple shift swap partners) and long periods in between alone. Everytime I boarded a plane in Iowa to head back to NC, or she boarded one here to head home, we would just sit there and cry like babies. We must have drove the airline people in both cities nuts for over a year!

But I sit here now, alone ... and I think about those days ... and I wish with all my heart I could have them back. I'd give anything to go 10 days without seeing her if it meant I would get 4 wonderful days with her! Being without her is killing me slowly every day. It will be 6 months next week, and I don't miss her one iota less today than I did the first day she was gone.

I want what I had ... I want what we had ... I used to thank God every day for giving her to me ... and now I beg him every day to bring her back to me.

Love hurts. It hurts so bad. It hurts so bad, if this is the way it's always going to be ... then I don't know if I can ever love anyone again. I don't know if I can ever take the risk again. I don't know if I can stand one more heartbreak.

Oh God, Love hurts.