Our Story's First Chapter

Ornela...you were right. I wrote about my feelings for you so very long ago, long before I knew how close we would eventually become. I went back through my journal and found the entry where you said I first wrote about you. After reading my words, I can see now what I could not then...that I was in love with you from the moment we had our first date. My God, I was in love with you even then.

December 10th, 2008:

Like all good stories, this one is about a girl. A girl I met a week before I went home, a girl whose midnight hair and onyx eyes captured my gaze from the moment I saw her. And, unfortunately for me, a girl whose destiny lies in DC while mine travels the winding road back home. She tells me that she wants to see where things go, to ignore the obstacles both time and distance create and see if there is anything more than this week we had together. I tell her I’d like that too. I tell her that I like her as she brushes aside the hair draping over her eyes and smiles.

So here we go...the quintessential DC woman falls for the southern gentleman whose genteel curiosities have melted her heart. I’ve done this all before. Their names and faces run together like the muddied waters bound by the inlets of the Potomac Bay. I dated these women, too many women, and now I debate whether I am simply repeating history. There was the girl from McLean who I took to see the lions roar at the local zoo. The woman from Rosslyn who I toured through the museums as she flirtatiously squeezed my arm. The co-ed from Georgetown and the consultant from Adams Morgan who drove me wild simply because she was the only one I couldn’t chase down. I’ve dated them all and as soon as they relent I ungraciously take my leave…not because I hate the women, but because I love the chase. 

But this girl is different. She arouses not the passions of amusement or diversion, but rather fidelity and (oddly enough) commitment. Of these varied emotions, the latter has always been a ghost. Its immense demands on my independence have caused me to scoff at its supplications and relegate it to the happy abode of neglect. I have refused to be reined in by a woman for fear of losing myself. My fear is not without justification as this unhappy scenario has played itself out more than once. Still, I’d like to take a chance…just one more time. I’d like to take a chance with this girl and see where things go.

 

I met her a week before I go home to Alabama. You meet a girl, you take her out, and you see where things go. Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, you know after the first date that there’s something there. It’s a look in her eyes, the way she twirls her hair, the pounding of your heart. You can’t let her go, you just can’t. Even if a thousand miles and as many nights separate your souls, fate has a way of bending ever so slightly to accommodate the heart’s desire.

When I read these words that I wrote about you after our first date in 2008, I cried. You have always held a place in my heart no other woman could ever touch. More than anything in the world right now, I want to be with you in Boston. I want to look into your beautiful eyes and hear your voice, but because you have asked me not to phone or e-mail you I will not contact you. But Ornela, if these words have stirred the same feelings in your heart that they have in mine, will you please call me?

I just want to be close to you right now. There is something very special and very important going on between us and we have to follow these feelings. I know you feel it too. I know you felt it in our kiss only two days ago when we finally surrendered to our love for each other. I think you understand that what is happening between us, in this moment, is different than before and is the start of something wonderful for both of us.

I do not know if you are still reading my journal, but I know that if you are it is because you still love me and some part of you wants to spend our lives together. Do not forget your promise to me. Do not forget that our love deserves one, final chance. All I ask for is the chance to have a normal relationship with you, both of us living in Boston where we can be with each other every day, opening our hearts to one another and growing in love. If we commit to a real relationship and find that it simply is not right, then we will know that it was never meant to be. But how can we spend the rest of our lives knowing that we were so close, but never gave our love a real chance to grow into something amazing? 

Please do not withdraw from me because you are afraid of being hurt or of hurting me. You know that I will never break your heart again, and I am willing to risk being hurt a thousand times over just to find out if we are truly meant for each other, because the possibility of sharing our lives together in love is worth everything to me. Our love is worth everything to me. You are worth everything to me.

 

Six years ago in my first journal entry about you I wrote that "fate has a way of bending ever so slightly to accommodate the heart’s desire." Just yesterday I repeated in my last entry that I believe "the fates are already working to bring us back together." And now today I received some wonderful news that confirmed how prophetic those words have proven to be. Fate, it seems, has finally intervened in our story. Please call me Ornela. I have something very important that I need to tell you.