I was twenty-one when I learned what loss really means.
I was engaged to my first real love.
Life had clicked into place in the exact way I had dreamed it would. I was young, in love, chosen, certain. It felt like the story had begun exactly the way it was supposed to.
A month after our engagement, he died.
And for years after that, something in me went quiet.
I moved through life, but I was not fully living. I functioned, but I did not feel the way I once had. I was deep in grief, deep in depression, and quietly convinced that love like that does not happen twice.
A part of me decided my love story had already happened.
And it was gone.

