Letters To My Future Husband: Letter #165.

FREE IMAGES Dear Mr. Melissa Blake:

Well, it's the beginning of 2013. Honestly, I've dreading this year for some 10 years. I sometimes thought that if I didn't think about it, that if my subconscious could just push it to the side, then, well, it would be real. But, the calendar doesn't lie, so there's no denying this one.

This year marks 10 years since my father committed suicide.

Honestly, I don't even know where to begin when talking and writing and processing this sort of milestone, but I know you're always there to listen, Sweetpea, and I know you'll always be one of the people in my life that I can always turn to. I'm sure I'll be writing about this milestone throughout 2013 as new emotions come to the surface, but there's one thing you really, really, really (did I mention really...?) need to know: I never had a chance to become one of those girls, a cynic when it came to love and relationships.

It's true. My parents' marriage was a real-life Camelot of grand gestures and late-night back rubs and finish-each-others'-sentence conversations. When I was little, I half-thought everyone called their spouses animal names after my father began calling my mother ‘dear.”

And I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I had an equally idyllic relationship with my father. He was the one who held me along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, hunched over for hours as his backed ached and my feet mingled with the silk-like sand and crystal-clear water. He was the one who preferred to browse every window display in the mall and he was also the one who I saved a seat for on our living room couch every week for Dawson’s Creek.

I naturally thought my story would follow in their storybook footsteps. When I was younger, the fact that it didn't used to bother me to know end. I'd agonize over it back then. OK, there's still a bit of residual agonizing going on, but those moments are becoming fewer and far between now. I like to think my relationship with my father had something to do with that. What do you think, Sweatpea? Until we meet... xoxo

[Photos via We Heart It]