We’ve all heard about forbidden love and unrequited love, but what about unspoken love? The bond between two people that feels kismet, yet remains unbound. 

It’s the electricity without touch.

The soulful looks from across the room.

That initial meet cute that welds two souls together,

forgetting what life was before now.

It’s time for another edition of Unedited Me! The part of the blog where I remove all filters and layout where I’m truly at with life and MeetCUTEs. With Vol. 1 of Unedited Me being more of a coming-to-term reflection, today’s blog post is more of a beautification. 

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”

- Maya Angelou

Let’s dig in.

If there was ever a decision in life I could pinpoint that changed everything, it was how The Adorer and I’s love story ended! Like parallel realities, my life could have taken a very different road. One road led to the life I’m living right now, but the other road led to the life I had been brought up to believe was my destination. It was supposed to be the cookie-cutter life and at that time, being 19 years old, I yearned for that copy-and-paste kind of life. 

If you haven’t read Part 1, then you need to catch up. Read about this love story's beginnings before diving into this love story’s inevitable destination.

However, if you are all caught up, then let’s dig into the parallel realities.

When I was eight years old, I sat in a hair salon chair with my back to the mirror staring at my mom’s worried face. I had come for a haircut because my curls had become “unmanageable.” When the hairdresser finished, she swivelled the chair around and I gawked at my hair that had been cut like Jonathan Taylor Thomas’ teenage boy look on the tv show, Home Improvement. It was the 90s, I lived in a small town, and so this was (supposedly) the only solution. I cried. From that day forward, random fully grown adults would call me a boy. It has stuck with me to this day, because it was the moment I began to believe I wasn’t worthy. This thought later translated into not being worthy of another’s affection. I didn’t seem to have the look or personality worthy enough. 

It’s funny the things we pick up as children and how we process them in our ever-evolving minds. Though this story has started bleak, this is not the feeling throughout this two-part series. 

This meetCUTE is a love story.

I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, even to my own detriment. I believe people are mainly good, so I’m rarely suspicious. This was until I went to therapy and realized I had lost faith in my instincts after a decade of gaslighting (those stories to come). During this particular story of deception, I was relearning how to listen to my gut. There was a little voice at the back of my mind, quietly nudging me, but I took The Spouse at face value. I didn’t think a Christian could be so sneaky. 

Honestly, after being in the church for most of my life, you think I would have known better! 

Let’s dig in.

Set-ups feel like they are something of the past. As the years age and working-from-home becomes more known, meeting others organically or through friends seems further from the norm. Yet, here I was, in the middle of a set-up. 

He was a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend! There were a lot of connections that made this blind date possible, including my friend being the middle person. She did say, “I know nothing about this guy besides my friend vouching for him.” Since her friend was a woman, I thought I could trust this vouch from a stranger. Little did I know, I was about to learn an important lesson.