Have you ever noticed, that no matter how hard you try not to think about something, it always hits you dead on in your dreams?

I woke up this morning, with Emma curled around my hand, eagerly awaiting her morning scratch behind the ears. Lying there, staring at the ceiling, I wished to close my eyes and go back to sleep, back to the dream that seemed so real.

I've waited 28 years to fall in love, and when I did, the man who could have owned my heart, decided it wasn't for him to keep.

It reminds me of something I read once about soulmates. How even though you are supposed to be together, it doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes you lose each other by a simple quirk of fate, by something you should have done but didn't do.

I've probably missed my moment over a thousand times. Maybe too unaware and caught up in something else, to realize that when opportunity knocked, I was nowhere around to answer it.

To me, love is like a traffic light. Sometimes you're stuck on red, sometimes you're ready to go, and other times you should just proceed with caution.

Sometimes I am convinced, that I was napping at the wheel when my light turned green, missing my chance to go, as the signal changed back to red.

And then he found me, though neither of us had been looking, and things seemed to fall right into place.

In those months, I thought of him as mine, and he was.

He seemed to understand me without even trying, as if he had always known me. We thought so many of the same things, it was like being able to predict what the other was going to say, long before they even began to speak the words.

And there were nights when we didn't need to talk, when the simple sound of silence was all we needed between us. How many times, did we fall asleep like that, cradling a phone beside our ear, listening to each other breathing because it was so much more than either of us realized.

It was an unexplainable connection. A feeling that something was just right.

But it wasn't enough.

I lost him. Lost the lump of clay that had once been designated as my own. Lost it so bad, that no matter how hard I tried or how hard I looked, there was no way for me to get it back.

And so I had to let go.

But letting go for me has never been easy. I tend to hang on with both hands until there's only the tiniest bit of fabric left to cling to. I wean myself slowly, trying as I do, to convince myself that it is for the best, this letting go.

You can't hang on forever I tell myself. You deserve more, you deserve someone who will love you for everything that you are, not someone who will only take you on conditions.

And I know I'm right, at the same time I wish I were wrong.

You're heart doesn't choose who to love, it simply knows it loves someone and without that person in your life, a little corner of your heart will forever be an empty place.