I moved to Boston when I was in my 20’s. I went to school at the University of Chicago, first off and studied Chemistry. I grew up in Southern California, and went to college for four years there, and then transferred to the University of Chicago for another four years. It was a long and drawn out ordeal. Not that it was bad, but I was away from my family. I have three brothers and two sisters, and my folks, who all still live in California.

I’ve had a few different girlfriends, lived with a few, but just have yet to tie the knot. I don’t know what it is. All my siblings are married and have kids, and out of all of us, I am the most successful. I have a PH-D in Chemistry. I’ve worked a lot of years pretty much just isolating myself from everyone. I have been just so involved in my work that I haven’t had time for family or friends in a lot of years. I don’t know if it’s helped me or hurt me. I think it has actually hurt me. Yes, my work has always come first. Everything else has always come second.

I’m not a selfish person, but most people would say that I am, because I’ve never been married, I’ve never had any kids. I guess the opportunity was just not there for me. It could have been there, maybe I ran away from it.

My first love, yea, it should have been her. We should have been married. We should have had kids together. Why did we not? Well, she left, but it’s not like she had a choice, her old man, (her father), was a total ****. Treated her like crap, like she was a slave, and she wasn’t going to put up with it anymore. She actually moved out of state. I was kind of in shock when I received a letter from her after the school year had started. I was a junior and she was a senior. I didn’t think at that time that I would ever see her again. After that I didn’t hear from her. It’s like she dropped off the planet. I had no way of finding her other than through her dad, who I did not know. I knew who he was, but I just had never met him.

She finished school, and I finished school the following year, and started college right away. I still didn’t know where she was. I think that I was always in the back of her mind no matter where she was. But she probably thought that she would never see me again either.

She left in 1981, and then one summer she came back, she was married and had two kids already. I was shocked! It was great to see her. I only got to speak to her for about 15 minutes, her husband at the time, I never met him. He was a very jealous man.

She had told me that one of the nights, she was going to come across the creek and see me and some old friends, and he wouldn’t let her go without taking one of her girls with her. The baby, he wanted her to take the baby, walk in the pitch dark down a hill with a baby. So she couldn’t make it there, it was less than a hundred yards away.

So after that, that was the last time I actually saw her. That was 20 years ago. Then about a year later I think, maybe it was 1989. When I was already in Chicago, I got a letter from her. Of course she still had my parents address and they forwarded me the letter. She told me that when she saw me that all the old feelings were there, like they had never gone away. I couldn’t believe it, I thought that what she had said was my imagination. I felt the same way. But we had never exchanged any kind of words of love towards each other. We should have but we never did. We called each other a couple of times, at her work and she would call me from her work. Practical joke calls, which at one time got out of hand, because I had acquired a girl friend. But as least she had my number. Then I didn’t hear anything for awhile. One day, I got a call and she was in Green Bay, really super close to me. Did we get to see each other? No! She had told me that she had another baby, three kids, already and she was only 24.

I really wanted to see her, and was hoping that she would have been able to come to Chicago to see me, but she was married, and had all the kids to take care of and had to work too. She was so unhappy and there was nothing at the time that she could do about it. She was in Green Bay for four months, and then went back to Texas.

She put up with her miserable marriage until she couldn’t take it anymore. Then in 1992, she got a divorce. But stupidly she had said, she got right into another relationship. It was 1994, where she once again had found me, no, she hadn’t lost me, I was still In Chicago. She called me and told me that things weren’t going to well, and that she was fixen to end it. She couldn’t take the grief anymore, and I told her to call me if anything did happen. Then it did, and she did call me, and I blew her off.

Years just slowly passed by, I didn’t realize that it had only maybe been five years. I was back in California again. She once again found me. She was so good at it. I guess her being an investigator for a lot of years, made it easy. Then that’s when email first really started, I think it was 1999 when she found me. I at the time had a woman that I was living with. But neither one of us was married to anyone. We emailed back and forth for several month. She was a writer, and at the time was writing a Novel. I was in it apparently. She sent me her first book she had published in 1998. A book of poetry, that she not only dedicated it to me, but two other people as well. She never liked to leave people out. She never lost feelings for me. I don’t know if my feelings were deeply buried in the back of my mind of her. I guess they had to be, because of my girlfriend at the time. Then out of the blue, she proposes to me via email. I guess I was in more shock. But we were 1500 miles apart. She said she didn’t mean it, I was breaking her concentration of her writing that was going on. I don’t know. But I was in shock about it, and was mean to her about it. Really I was so mean, that I told her I never wanted to hear from her again. What because she wanted to marry me. She always dreamed and wanted to marry me, and I do that to her.

It’s been another nine years. I don’t know where she is. I know that she is married again. She was single for at least ten years, and I was not married, I was single during the whole time she was single. You probably wonder how I know she is married again. Well, she sent me another book in 2002, and yea, name changed, dedicated the book to her husband.

It’s not like it was a shock to me either. She was beautiful, inside and out.

Seeing this book, and reading all that she wrote, it just makes me wonder if this time she will be married forever. When and the day, if I ever see her again. My mother passed away a few years ago, and it was sad, because my mother meant everything to me. I don’t even know if she ever met my mother. I wanted to call and tell her, but had no way to get in touch with her. Me, I’m not an investigator. I don’t think I could find myself out of a tin can. I’m kidding though. Yes, me with the college education, I can’t find her. But what if after all this time, all these years she doesn’t want me to find her.

I wonder if she has been looking for me again. It seems always out of the blue, someone in my family hears from her. It’s either me, or my brother Matt, or my sister Amy. We were her three I guess. She really didn’t know my other siblings.

My birthday passed by again, and no I didn’t hear anything from her. Yet, she probably had sent me something somewhere, but I haven’t received anything.

I don’t know where she is. I know she is in Texas, but that is about it. I know that her kids are all grown now.

But now, we are so many years older. A few months ago, mind you it’s now 2008, my sister and my brother both received letters from her, with messages to give to me. She has been looking for me. My first thought, is she single again. Nawwwwww, I really doubt that she is, I bet she just misses me.

Have I contacted her, no not yet. I don’t know if I would know what to say. How about, I’ve always missed you, even though it’s been 20 years.