Desmond and Penny

Lost was on last night. I used the hour beforehand to catch up on last week's episode so my evening was completely Lost. My favourite characters in this show are without a doubt Desmond and Penny. They love each other in spite of flaws and faults, in spite of hurtful actions and hateful family. They love each other enough to wait eight years for a phone call. Their love for each other is so deep that it spans alternate universes - as we saw last night many loves span alternate universes. This is how I love Husby.

Husby and I met in college, I came over to study at the University of Southern Maine for a semester and was living in a dorm that shared occupancy with the local art school and technical college. Husby was studying computer science at the technical college. One day he walked into the cafeteria and, knowing nobody, sat at a table where the people seemed to know each other and were having fun. He was greeted by a barrage of accents from all over the world and there began his journey.

I remember being friends with this great guy and halfway through the semester realising that my great friend was the same guy as the annoying kid who'd sat with us in the cafeteria. My great friend was also the same kid who showed up an hour early for a movie because he didn't know if "half seven" in British meant half an hour before seven or half an hour after seven and then proceeded to talk through the entire movie.

He says that he knew I was beautiful when we first met and then we talked and he knew I was a beautiful person. We went on a cruise and a friend of ours pointed to a star that she and her boyfriend had named for them. She couldn't remember which one it was however and kept changing her mind. I leaned over to Husby and said "They really should have just picked the darn moon then she'd never lose it." From that moment on he was hooked.

For me it was more gradual and while the highlight of my day was getting back to the dorm and having Tea with husby, I didn't look at him in that way until I walked in one day and he was coming out of the shower. The steam, the wet hair, the bare muscles, phew my goodness.

Still our road was not easy, I was dating his best friend from high school and he was dating my room-mate. We lived in a soap opera for a while and I won't drive you crazy with the details but one day my boyfriend hacked into husby's email and confronted all of us about our feelings. We don't see him anymore but I was maid of honor at my room-mate's wedding - Husby was her husband's best man!

This happened after three months and about three weeks before I was due to leave. We weren't together, we couldn't do that to my room-mate, but when she went home for Christmas break he told me he loved me and was going to ask me to marry him when we graduated. I told him I couldn't tell him the same thing.

The next day I flew home. I cried all the way to Boston airport then I got on my plane to New York and looked at the empty seat next to me. The only person I wanted to be in it was Husby. When I got back to England I called him and told him I loved him too (actually I may have IM'd him - I was 19 after all)!

For three years we lived in separate countries seeing each other only two or three times a year. The soap opera continued, my high school love finally told me he loved me, Husby thought I was going to leave him on many occasions, my jealousy of the women in his life knew no bounds. But through phone calls and emails I believe we got to know each other far deeper than we could have done in person. In September 2003 we were married and I moved to Maine.

My parents were next door neighbors as children and think it's cosmic reparation that my true love had to live 3000 miles away. I am sure that in an alternate time-line we would have still found each other.