The happiest time of my life is already over; much of it depended on you, but it was also the newness of everything. My first year in college, away from home, away from a stressful family, freedom, the ability to make my own choices, surrounded by new, fun and interesting people I swear every day I was intoxicated on life. My heart was filled to the brim with joy with every new, even mundane, experience. Sitting in the student center watching others go by, going to the cafeteria with new friends and laughing the whole way, but you, were the best of it all.

Your hazel eyes and foreign accent, something about you resonated deep within me, even when I first noticed you out of the window I had a thought. "There is my first husband." What a strange thought! I had never had a boyfriend or even was thinking about marriage, and this spurred me to go talk to you. I could listen to your deep voice for hours, or revel in your big smile that made your cheeks a bit pointy, your scent drove me mad, and when you would get up from the sofa to leave, I would sit in your spot to be able to keep smelling it. You made me so happy, so so happy. I used up all of my life's happiness that one year with you. Then you moved home, and a girl who loved e.e. cummings and studied French literature caught your eye.

I am married now, and have a wonderful daughter. But I will never love my husband as intensely and feverishly as I did you. I try to tell myself it was just the hormones and being drunk on life, and maybe it was, but I still go back to campus some times, when the weather in the fall and spring have that beautiful softness to it that makes one want to walk alone and ponder life, but as nice as it is, as much as I yearn to be back there, young, happy, no responsibilities just pure joy and learning, I can never go back. I can never see you again. I know it wouldn't have worked out, and it still wouldn't if we were to meet again, but you were the embodiment of that joy, and without you in my memories and in that place, there's an absence of substance to the joy, there's a twinge of sadness every time, and a little bit of guilt, every time I think about you and that year.