4.

We got married four years ago today. Last year when we celebrated our anniversary and exchanged our annual anniversary letters to each other, I didn't know we wouldn't have a lifetime of anniversaries to share.

I thought we would one day be a little old couple walking down the street holding hands. I never ever imagined the possibility that any of this could ever happen. Ever. Let alone before our fourth wedding anniversary.


For me, this week has been overflowing with reminders of the the time around our wedding. Our fun proposal (the Wednesday before our wedding). The events of the week. The feelings of joy, anticipation and overwhelming love. Our wedding was wonderful, and so were the first 3 years and 8 1/2 months of marriage.

Then the light switch flipped.

And I am stuck living with the unrelenting cognitive dissonance between the happiness and love I experienced in our relationship and the reality I find myself in now.

This alternate universe that I was suddenly hurled into feels like the beginning of that episode of Star Trek: Voyager where we see Voyager as a war ship. Some things in my life are the same as before but what is most important is completely wrong, which makes everything all wrong.

Only I don't get to go back my right universe; that world no longer exists so I am forced to live the rest of my life in this one. Not unlike Voyager stuck in out the Delta Quadrant, I guess. Only they made it home after seven seasons.

In this reality I find myself in, there is no deus ex machina. And there is no time travel to go back and fix where the timeline went wrong. Instead, I have to make a new home here in this universe, where today is our last anniversary and I am left to deal with the fallout of broken promises.