After the divorce, after the games, after the years of trying to become something stable again, I found myself alone in a way that felt different than before.
I was older now. I had already loved badly. I had already trusted too easily. I had already believed in dreams that were never really mine to keep.
But even after everything, I still wanted love.
I did not know if that made me hopeful or foolish.
Dating had changed. The world had moved onto computers, profiles, messages, and pictures. People did not just meet at work, church, school, or through friends anymore. They met through words typed onto a screen.
At first, it felt strange. A person could be anything online. They could be kinder than they really were. Smarter. Prettier. More honest. More available. They could hide a marriage, a temper, an addiction, or a whole other life behind a smiling photograph.
I learned that slowly.
So I made rules for myself.
First, email.
Then text.
Then phone.
Then video chat.
Then, if all of that still felt real, maybe we would meet.
You can fake a profile. You can fake a picture. You can fake sweet words in an email.
But it is harder to fake a voice.
And it is harder still to fake a face looking back at you through a video screen.
That became my process. Not because I was cold. Not because I wanted to interrogate anyone. I was just tired of being fooled by hope.
Hope had cost me too much already.
There were conversations that went nowhere. There were women who disappeared. There were messages that started warm and ended empty. There were people who seemed interested until life, fear, truth, or whatever they were hiding got in the way.
Still, I kept looking.
I told myself I was being careful.
Maybe I was.
Or maybe I was still the same man I had always been, just older and more bruised, still believing somewhere deep inside that love could save a person.
I was not looking for perfect anymore.
I had already chased perfect.
Perfect had broken me.
What I wanted now was something real. Someone honest. Someone who could laugh. Someone who could see me as I was and not as some role I was supposed to perform.
Then one day, another message appeared.
At first, there was nothing remarkable about it.
Just another profile.
Just another conversation.
Just another possibility.
But something about it felt different.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just different.
And I had no way of knowing that a simple message on a computer screen was about to lead me toward the woman with the green eyes.