Letters To My Future Husband

I wasn’t supposed to find out like this. The glow of my phone screen sliced through the dimness of my apartment, and for one split second, I thought it was just another mindless scroll. Cat videos. Vacation photos. Engagement rings I could double tap and scroll past without flinching. Until I saw his name. Until I saw her face. Until I saw the words that cut me deeper than any blade could. Engaged. The man I had given three years of my life to. The man who told me I was “too much” one month, and then “not enough” the next. The man who left me standing in the middle of a crowded café with nothing but an empty coffee cup and a heart that couldn’t stop bleeding. Now, he was smiling in a photograph, lips pressed to another woman’s temple, a diamond glittering on her hand. A diamond that should have been mine, in another world. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t blink. My thumb hovered over the glowing screen as if touching it might burn me. My body hadn’t caught up to the reality that my heart had already broken. Again. My pulse roared in my ears, and bile rose in my throat. God, how many times had I imagined this moment? Not like this...never like this...but in daydreams where I was the one smiling, my finger weighed down by proof that someone had finally chosen me. Instead, I was the girl on the other side of the screen. Forgotten. Replaced. Deleted. A loud knock startled me out of my trance. “Isla? Open up!” Sienna. Of course it was her, the only person who knew how fragile I was beneath the quiet smile I wore to work. The only one who saw the cracks, who knew how sharp the pieces were underneath. I didn’t move. Maybe if I stayed still, she’d think I wasn’t home. But the knock came again, louder this time. “Isla Rowan, I know you’re in there. Don’t make me kick this door down in heels. I’ll do it.” Despite the ache clawing through my chest, a small, broken laugh slipped past my lips. Typical Sienna. Threatening violence in stilettos. I dragged myself off the couch, every step heavier than the last, and cracked the door open. She slipped inside without waiting for an invitation, her fiery red curls bouncing as if even gravity couldn’t tame her. Her eyes softened the moment they landed on me. “You saw it, didn’t you?” I swallowed, but my throat was sandpaper. I nodded once, afraid that if I opened my mouth, the sob clawing at my throat would escape and never stop. “Oh, Isla…” Her voice broke with mine as she pulled me into her arms without another word. For a moment, I let myself crumble. My tears soaked her sweater, and she didn’t flinch, didn’t complain. Her hand rubbed circles on my back, steady and grounding, while my chest heaved against hers. “He’s engaged,” I whispered finally, the words raw and jagged like glass in my mouth. “I know.” She squeezed me tighter. “I saw it before I came over. I was hoping maybe you hadn’t yet.” I let out a shaky laugh, hollow and bitter. “Lucky me.” Sienna leaned back just enough to look at me. “Listen to me, Isla. He doesn’t deserve your tears. That man couldn’t see the treasure he had in front of him. He was blind. Blind and stupid.” Her conviction was fierce, but I only shook my head. “If I was a treasure, Sienna, he wouldn’t have let me go.” Her jaw tightened, and she grabbed my shoulders like she could shake the doubt out of me. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare blame yourself for his failure. One day, someone is going to see you for everything you are, Isla. Every scar, every flaw, every soft, quiet part of you. And when they do, they won’t just hold onto you, they’ll fight to keep you. They’ll choose you, every damn day.” Her words should have been enough. They should have stitched the hole in my chest, stopped the bleeding. But tonight, they felt like nothing more than bandages over a wound still gaping open. I looked away, brushing a strand of hair from my wet cheek. “I don’t think that day is ever going to come for me.” Sienna’s expression softened. She cupped my face in her hands like she had when we were teenagers and I’d gotten my heart broken for the first time. “It will. You just don’t see it yet.” Her belief was unwavering. Mine was nonexistent. When she finally left, reluctantly, only after making me promise I’d eat something, I was swallowed by silence again. The kind that pressed in on me, heavy and suffocating, making me ache for an escape. So I reached for the one thing that never judged me, my journal. Its worn leather cover was soft under my fingers, as familiar as breathing. I opened to a blank page, my pen trembling in my hand. And then, I let my soul spill. Dear Future Husband, Please don’t choose someone else while I’m still waiting for you. Please don’t make me watch from the sidelines while you slip a ring on another woman’s finger. Please don’t tell me I’m too much, or not enough, or anything in between. Please don’t leave me wondering why my love was so easy to walk away from. I don’t need perfect. I don’t need grand gestures or promises written in the stars. I just need you to stay. To look at me and choose me, even on the days when I am messy and broken and terrified of being left again. I don’t know who you are, or if you even exist. But tonight, when the world feels cruel and my heart feels unworthy, I need to believe you’re out there. I need to believe that one day, someone will read these words and think, “That’s her. That’s my forever.” Sincerely, Your Future Wife. When the ink finally stopped flowing, I sat back and stared at the page through tear-blurred eyes. My handwriting looked foreign, shaky, messy, ruined in places where tears had fallen. Each word was a confession I hadn’t dared say out loud. And though my chest still ached, though my eyes burned, I felt… lighter. Like maybe if I wrote enough of these letters, the hole inside me wouldn’t feel so wide. Because the truth was, I wasn’t waiting for some perfect husband to come rescue me. I wasn’t even sure I believed in that anymore. What I wanted was so much smaller… and yet so much harder to find. I wanted someone to look at me and see me. To stay when I was too much and remind me I wasn’t too little. To love me like I was already enough, without me having to earn it, shrink for it, or beg for it. I wanted to stop being the girl men used and left behind. With a shaky breath, I pressed the journal to my chest. Its leather cover was soft, familiar, almost like it had been waiting for me to bleed into it all along. Curling onto the couch, I let my body give in to the exhaustion that came from carrying too much heartbreak for too long. The pages beneath my cheek smelled like ink and saltwater tears. They smelled like loss. But underneath, in a way I couldn’t explain, they also smelled like possibility. And as the dark pulled me under, my last thought wasn’t anger or bitterness. It was a quiet, desperate prayer whispered into the silence. Please… whoever you are… find me. Not to fix me. Not to save me. Just to show me I’m still worth finding.