LOVE UNMET

After a marriage of over ten years, I thought I had my person. Life was perfect, or what society tells you that is. House in the suburbs, 2.5 kids and a dog. Normative, right? Except, it wasn't. I realized that my life was not my own. The abuse and control was so subtle, I barely even noticed it creeping in, at first. What I did know was that I had lost myself. Who was Aisha? What did I want out of life? How could I start on a journey that would lead me back to me? So, I returned to a passion I had that took a backseat to real life. Writing stories. My repertoire and name grew in the book world until I owned my own publishing company and had authors that I was nurturing. It made my husband uncomfortable to have to share me with the world, but I was feeling like a new person. His insecurities began to dim that joy for me and we drifted apart, but I still tried to love him in the same way, I truly did.

Then came the message to my Instagram. 'I've read your work, it's great. I have a book and I am looking for a publisher.' His book was one of the best I had ever read in any genre and I had been an avid reader as well as a creator of different worlds with my own pen and imagination. Our conversations turned from books to talks of childhood, favorite movies, likes and dislikes, goals and everything under the sun, except for sex. We never spoke of it. There were so many similarities that we could have been the same person. There was even beauty and lessons in our differences. They helped us to grow as people even more. I began to open up to someone in ways that I never had before. It was freeing and refreshing and I was truly happy.

Then, I realized I was more than happy. I was me and at peace and I had the support and dare I say love that I didn't even realized that I craved. Gene said the right things, did the right things, we realized that we were each others' person. Love for me had evolved from what I was taught it was to a feeling that I realized I had never had and it started with finding the me I had lost along with the new me I was becoming. Growth doesn't stop, we are always evolving and changing and I had to remember that.

Now, we have plans to be together. We are building a life outside of the life that I already have with the person I thought I would sit in a rocking chair and watch our grandkids play with. It's a hard thing to accept, and I am at a loss as to how to tell him it's over and I want to move on. Thank goodness that I have six years to figure that part out. That's when Gene comes home from prison. He lives on the other side of the country and we have never met except through letters, pictures, emails, phone calls and a jail sanctioned video chat.

There are those who would think, how could a married, educated, successful woman fall for someone who is in prison? To that I say that once I was able to see me for who I was, it gave me the ability to look past the mistakes that someone else made before they knew themselves as well. Love is not always what society wants you to think that it looks like. I had that and discovered that love can change, grow, diminish and teach you lessons. People change and with it, their heart's desires. This Aisha that stands before you now knows who she is and who and what she wants, and in six years, when they open the gates, I will be standing there to meet my love. Together, we'll write the next chapter of our lives and of what love is to us.