When we were together, and you had to leave, I gave you a long hug because you were the first woman in my life to show me what love feels like, and I was afraid of feeling what I feel now. The emptiness of missing you and wishing I could hug you and tell you I love you.

I have stood watch all over this world on many deployments and overseas tours. Yet, I did not know what it felt like to feel love and the safety of having a home until you held me for the first time. I never felt spiritually whole until I looked into your beautiful eyes.

I know now the rest of my life, I will serve on a spiritual deployment on the waters of the Phoenix Ocean because I no longer know how to find or feel the safety I felt when my heart was next to yours. Nor do I want to look for what I felt with you with someone else.

My dreams are a shoreline; my memories of you will forever flow as I look up at the North Star and express loving gratitude that it was you that showed me what love is while awakening my soul. Every day I pray to God that Someday I will be able to hug you and tell you I love you and feel spiritually whole.

In my life, the only time I felt happy and complete was while holding your hand and looking into your beautiful eyes. At the same time, I felt loved and accepted for the first time. There are no words that will ever be enough to express how much pain I feel knowing that I hurt you when all I ever wanted was to make you smile and to always wake up to a new beautiful day with messages from you to read as we talked about life, and shared our dreams. At the same time, I tried to make you laugh with one of my bad jokes, and you called me a dork.

I walked through life, never feeling alive until I held your hand. I want you to know that you are a beautiful precious soul. I would not be the man that I am or have accomplished what I have if I did not have the love you created in my heart and beautiful memories of you to inspire me to be a better man than I was before I felt your hand in mine for the first time.

Our paths may never cross again, but I am sending you this letter because I want you to know that I love you and have never stopped loving you. I don’t know if I will make it to heaven, but when you held me, it was the only time in my life I felt the safety of being home. It was the only time I felt spiritually complete.

Losing you and my children was the most painful event of my life. The only thing that keeps me going is my faith in Jesus Christ and honoring the love I feel in my heart for you and the beautiful memories I have with you by being the best I can be while trying to protect others from what I have lost.

Every day I feel incomplete because I cannot share it with my first best friend. Every day, I feel incomplete because I can look up and see the beautiful light of the North Star, but I cannot hear your voice, the way you laugh, or see your beautiful smile.

I love you.